Breakthroughs in cancer treatment have resulted from new gene-based treatments, including remission in some cases of childhood leukemia that would otherwise have been fatal.
But the breakthroughs have not been without risk. Seizures, dangerously low blood pressure, raging fevers, even death are among the side effects that have come with high-tech cures. Turns out that, as with conventional chemotherapy, the new treatments are like a light switch — they can be turned on or off only when the medicine is administered or withheld.
Now, Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor Danith Ly has come up with a way to dial back or accelerate the effects of the treatment — a kind of biological dimmer switch to control the action of the medicine after it has been given. His company, ChiraGen, also is among 10 tenants of the University of Pittsburgh’s LifeX lab space and startup accelerator located in the Strip District.
“He’s clearly passionate about his work,” said Colleen Cassidy, a neurobiologist and assistant director of biopharmaceuticals at LifeX. If he’s successful, “It would be revolutionary.”
An open house at LifeX is scheduled for Tuesday. It’s among the events planned for Life Sciences Week 2018: Convergence and Connectivity. Panel discussions, tours and other events are also planned.
ChiraGen is an early, pre-clinical startup and Mr. Ly is the only employee. The company has not yet begun to raise investment money.
Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are the big guns in cancer care. But in recent years, scientists have created a weapon by genetically souping up the patient’s naturally occurring killer cells in the bloodstream and injecting them into the patient. There, they are meant to hunt down and kill cancer cells.
The procedure harnesses the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. It has created a market that is expected to generate revenue of $3.9 billion by 2022, according to a forecast by Frost & Sullivan, a San Antonio, Texas-based analytics company.
“Life is so precious”
Mr. Ly was barely 6 in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge killed his father. The boy and his mother were sent to a collective farm, where they were separated and put to work cultivating rice. Money, private property and the practice of religion were abolished by the government.
At least one-quarter of Cambodia’s population of 7.5 million people died from disease, harsh working conditions or otherwise killed.
“That’s when I learned the value of working hard. That’s when I developed this ideology that life is so precious,” Mr. Ly said. “I survived, I became a stronger person.”
“When I’m in my coffin, I will tell my family I did everything I could to try to make the world a better place to live,” he said.
Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699
First Published: April 13, 2018, 1:00 p.m.
