Cells in the human body send messages back and forth to each other constantly, via nanoparticle-sized packets called exosomes. These messengers travel in and out of cells and throughout the bloodstream, carrying bits of genetic materials and proteins from one place to another, like a postal delivery service.
Now scientists have found a way to hitchhike on the postal truck, by enclosing a cancer drug inside an exosome envelope.
Exosomes bypass the body’s immune system, and help scientists solve the problem of how to get cancer drugs inside of cancer cells. Once inside, like a mail bomb, they shut down a cancer cell’s inner machinery.
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Cells in the human body send messages back and forth to each other constantly, via nanoparticle-sized packets called exosomes. These messengers travel in and out of cells and throughout the bloodstream, carrying bits of genetic materials and proteins from one place to another, like a postal delivery service.
Now scientists have found a way to hitchhike on the postal truck, by enclosing a cancer drug inside an exosome envelope.
Exosomes bypass the body’s immune system, and help scientists solve the problem of how to get cancer drugs inside of cancer cells. Once inside, like a mail bomb, they shut down a cancer cell’s inner machinery.
Dr. Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D., was recruited in 2012 to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center with the help of a Recruitment of Established Investigator Award from CPRIT. He is professor and chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology and director of the Metastasis Research Center. Prior to coming to Texas, he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Kalluri has developed a method to stop the action of a gene that is mutated in many cancers, called KRAS. The mutated gene sends protein production out of whack in the cancer cells, causing them to divide and grow, as well as move and metastasize. The mutation is prevalent in many cancers, but especially pancreatic cancer—a fast-growing and deadly cancer that often kills within months of diagnosis.
He has found a way to enclose a drug that targets mutated KRAS in clinical-grade exosomes cultured and grown in a good-manufacturing-practice facility.
So far, the exosomes containing the drug candidate have been tested in mice with pancreatic cancer, and have significantly increased the mice’s ability to survive the disease. “That is something that has never been seen before in these mouse models with any drug that anybody has tested,” Dr. Kalluri says.
He plans to conduct a Phase I clinical trial of the exosome drug therapy in patients suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer. The KRAS gene is also mutated in many other cancers, and if the drug shuts down the pancreatic cancer as Dr. Kalluri hopes, exosome therapy may have broad applicability for treating other types of cancer. The exosome therapy works even after cancer has metastasized.
Dr. Kalluri holds several patents and has cofounded a company, Codiak Biosciences, with geneticist Eric Lander of the Broad Institute. Codiak has attracted nearly $160 million in venture capital with plans to produce exosome therapeutics on an industrial scale. CPRIT holds an equity stake in the company.
“The state of Texas has significantly invested in doing innovative, out-of-the-box cancer research that will enable discovery of new drugs,” Dr. Kalluri says. “And at a place like MD Anderson, CPRIT support enables us to do cutting-edge cancer research and translate our ideas directly into clinical testing.”
Dr. Kalluri received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and received his M.D. from Brown University Medical School. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1997, and became a tenured professor in 2006.
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