Mason team playing a role in the Cancer Moonshot Initiative

John Hollis — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 16:58:39 +0000

Mason team playing a role in the Cancer Moonshot Initiative John Hollis Tue, 11/29/2022 - 11:58

Emanuel "Chip" Petricoin is the co-founder and the co-director of Mason's Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine. Photo by Creative Services

A team of ��AV scientists has a role in the White House Cancer Moonshot Initiative, and their work could help in the mission to reduce cancer rates in half over the next 25 years.

The U.S. government is partnering with researchers to reduce cancer deaths by bringing together a large community of patients, advocates, researchers and clinicians.

Researchers from the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM) within Mason’s College of Science are working on a molecular profiling technology that would better identify the most effective drugs in the fight against specific cancers.

“I think it’s very realistic to reduce cancer death rates in half in 25 years,” said Emanuel “Chip” Petricoin, a University Professor and the co-founder and co-director of CAPMM.

Petricoin cited better technologies and approaches for early detection, a growing cadre of targeted therapeutics and immunooncology drugs that are precision-tuned for specific individuals, and the democratization and commoditization of molecular profiling that allows patients to get therapies tailored to their specific needs as the reasons for his optimism.

The development of the Reverse Phase Protein Array (RPPA) as part of the Applied Proteogenomics OrganizationaL Learning and Outcomes (APOLLO) network is helping to prepare patients for therapy in future versions of the trials.

His team’s unique approach and a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA)-certified laboratory are two big reasons why Mason’s CAPMM team has been continuously funded by the Department of Defense’s Apollo Moonshot project for the past four years, Petricoin said.

The CAPMM team has a new initiative to develop a far less invasive “liquid biopsy” assay technology platform that requires a blood sample rather than a tumor biopsy to provide specific drug target information that will better fight the cancer.

Petricoin likes the direction in which he sees the research headed and says the only potential obstacle would be convincing insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies to pay for and provide the drugs at no cost for those trials.

“I can easily see cancer death rates even falling by 80 to 90% in 25 years compared to now,” he said. “I predict most cancer will become a chronic disease, managed like we do with other diseases, like diabetes.”

Chip Petricoin can be reached at epetrico@gmu.edu.

For more information, contact John Hollis at jhollis2@gmu.edu.

About George Mason

��AV is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls nearly 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Mason celebrates 50 years as an independent institution. Learn more at www.gmu.edu.

Topics

Tip Sheet

cancer research

Cancer Treatment

Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM)

College of Science

Research

Bioengineers and biologists team up to battle cancer cells

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:41:07 +0000

Bioengineers and biologists team up to battle cancer cells Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/21/2021 - 14:41

In This Story

Remi Veneziano

Bioengineers—like Remi Veneziano—find solutions to some of the world’s grand problems. But sometimes, it takes collaboration with scientists to find out the questions that need to be answered to properly apply and maximize these engineering solutions.

Veneziano, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computing, is partnering with Amanda Haymond, a research assistant professor in the School of Systems Biology, to apply DNA nanotechnology to create a drug that boosts the immune response to fight breast cancer.

Amanda Haymond is a research assistant professor in the School of Systems Biology in the College of Science.

Their work entitled “New Hybrid Molecular Modalities Comprised of DNA-Origami and Interfering Peptides as Inhibitors of Protein-Protein Interactions” received a grant of nearly $530,000 from the National Institutes of Health’s Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies program, which funds explicitly creative technologies for cancer detection or treatment. “There are two big things we are trying to do with this work, one is to answer a biological question, and the other is to provide a proof of concept for a new drug modality,” says Haymond.

On the biology side, Veneziano and Haymond are looking to target a specific protein’s complex. When a body is infected with cancer, a protein called IL-33 will signal the immune system to flood the cancerous area with immune cells to combat cancer and stop further damage. “However, in a chronic inflammatory cancer context, the flood of IL-33 can recruit a number of other cell types, including MDSCs, that are activated by binding to IL-33 and tamp down on the immune response,” says Haymond.

The influx of suppressive immune cells can be detrimental as the body stops fighting the cancer. In addition, the protein structure created from the interaction of IL-33 and MDSCs is quite large, which makes it difficult to target with conventional small molecule drugs. This is where Veneziano’s work in DNA nanotechnology comes in.

“With the technology we are developing, instead of testing multiple drug combinations for efficiency, we can take into consideration the structural parameters of the protein we are trying to target, and use DNA nanotechnology to build rigid nanoscale objects that would have the same dimensions and organization as the protein to target multiple sites of the protein simultaneously,” says Veneziano.

Remi Veneziano is using his DNA nanotechnology to test a new drug modality to fight breast cancer.

Therefore, the drugs they are developing will act as adaptors that will prevent the proteins from interacting together. Veneziano’s nanotechnology research makes it possible to precisely target multiple sites on these proteins concurrently to increase the success of their drug. So, instead of using three separate drugs that possibly won’t work in tandem properly to prevent this immune response, Haymond and Veneziano are developing a new drug modality that is exactly designed with the target in mind.

Veneziano is hopeful that this process could be completely automated, making it easier to target certain proteins to combat different types of cancer and diseases. This expansion will require even more collaboration between scientists and engineers in the future, Haymond and Veneziano say.

“This work can’t be done by bioengineers or biologists independently. It takes synergy between the two of us, and Mason and its institutes promote these types of collaborations,” says Veneziano.

Topics

Bioengineering

biology

School of Systems Biology

Department of Bioengineering

Breast Cancer

cancer research

CEC faculty research