Hollings Horizons Magazine Fall 2023 - Magazine - Page 23
Research NEWS
Ozgur Sahin, Ph.D.
Targeting Triple Negative
Breast Cancer
A three-year Fast-track Small Business Technology Transfer
(STTR) grant to Hollings researcher Ozgur Sahin, Ph.D.’s startup,
LoxiGen, will help it to develop an inhibitor targeting triple
negative breast cancer, which has a tendency to become resistant
to chemotherapy.
The goal is to produce a drug eligible for Investigational New Drug
status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Most of the time, people target the tumor itself, but in
this case, we are targeting both the tumor and the tumor
stroma — what we call the tumor microenvironment,”
Sahin said. The stroma is the mix of connective tissue,
blood vessels and inflammatory cells that surrounds
the cancerous tumor, providing a protective barricade
as well as the signals to help the tumor to grow.
“Our expectation is if you block this protein called LOX,
or lysyl oxidase, then you can open up the stroma, which is very stiff
in this patient group. Then you can make chemotherapy penetrate
better and be more efficacious. In addition to that, LOX also has
some tumor-centric effects. It can also activate some biological
processes in the tumor itself, and by inhibiting LOX, we are hitting
both the tumor and stroma at the same time.”
And although Sahin won’t be studying metastasis in this project,
other researchers have shown that LOX has a role in cancer
metastasis. Therefore, he said, it’s possible that the inhibitor under
development will affect metastasis as well as the tumor and the
tumor microenvironment. ◗
hollingscancercenter.musc.edu
Evan Graboyes, M.D.
Get Me To The Radiation
Suite On Time
Delays in starting radiation therapy after surgery for people with
head and neck cancer are associated with worse outcomes — and
yet half of these patients across the country don’t start radiation
therapy when they should.
A multi-disciplinary team at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center
has spent the last five years bringing this issue to light. Now, the
team, led by Evan Graboyes, M.D., has been awarded
a $3.5 million grant to test an approach for reducing
those delays, which should improve outcomes.
Graboyes said the delays happen because so much
coordination is required in head and neck cancer care,
which involves multiple teams of clinicians, including
surgical, radiation, and medical oncology teams, as
well as dental and oral surgery, pathology, and more.
Frequently, these teams cross health system lines. In
South Carolina, for example, patients may come to
MUSC for surgery but receive radiation or chemotherapy at
another facility closer to home.
Graboyes and colleagues will test an enhanced patient
navigation system with specific checkpoints built into the
care process to ensure that patients are beginning
radiation therapy on time.
A 150-patient randomized pilot trial at
Hollings has shown good results so far.
Now, the system will be tested at four
institutions across the country. ◗
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