Today's guest on THE ANTICANCER LIFE is Dr. Omid Veiseh, Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University and CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research, where he runs a lab that could change HOW we treat cancer forever.
What if instead of BUYING expensive immunotherapy drugs, your body could make them for you, inside a tiny-sized “drug factory”?
Immunotherapy is one of the most promising cancer treatments ever developed, curing previously incurable cancers…but it has limitations. It works in less than 50% of cancer patients. Not only that, certain immunotherapy treatments, like Proleukin – which is made from Interleukin-2, an immune cell your body naturally makes– has harsh side effects, a low half-life (which means it leaves your body quickly, within minutes) and, therefore, it requires frequent applications. The problem with that is when given systemically and frequently, as needed, it is tough for patients to handle. For these reasons, it’s given intravenously in an ICU and isn’t sustainable at high doses.
That’s because immune responses are a delicate balancing act. You want your body to send in immune cells and cytokines (like interleukin-2), but too much of an immune response – as anyone suffering from autoimmune disease or dealing with a “cytokine storm” knows – is dangerous. Interleukin-2 needs a local target, that’s how the body designed it to work.
When Interleukin-2 is used in cancer treatment and works, it works well. But as previously mentioned, it’s difficult to administer and comes with many issues. But what if we could solve all of those problems?
What if instead of paying for expensive, difficult-to-administer cancer drugs, you could simply receive an injection of programmed cells that make a continuous dose of Interleukin-2 where it’s needed most … at your tumor site? What if this lasted for weeks or months and the burden of invasive cancer treatment, suddenly became less expensive, less time-consuming, and WORKED BETTER?
That’s where Dr. Omid Veiseh comes in. He’s an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, where he runs a research program aimed at engineering next-generation treatments for a wide range of human diseases, including cancer.
He and his team have been working on NANO DRUG FACTORIES, which are exactly what the name implies. These are implantable “drug factories” – tiny in size, made up of engineered cells – that can deliver continuous, high doses of interleukin-2, activating your body’s immune response to fight the cancer. This means you can receive the implant on one day, go home the next, and for two to four weeks the drug factory stays open 24/7, inside your body while you go about your life.
