This weekend, thousands of riders will take to the streets for Pelotonia — the annual bike ride that raises millions of dollars for cancer research right here in Columbus.
One of the projects supported by that funding is showing real promise: a new drug discovered by Ohio State University researchers that’s being developed to treat some of the most difficult-to-target cancers.
Chad Bennett is executive director of chemistry at the Drug Development Institute at Ohio State. Bennett co-led the team that developed the new drug.
Matthew Rand: How did this discovery come about and what makes this drug different from existing cancer treatment?
Chad Bennett, PhD: It's an interesting drug. It blocks the cellular and metabolic processes that are essential to all cells, but specifically to cancer cells, because they really divide and grow quickly. And so, this blocks pyrimidine biosynthesis. That's one of the essential building blocks of DNA and RNA. And so, our desire is to stop cancer cells from growing and dividing as quickly. And then it'll also make them more susceptible to other cancer therapies, so that we can really use a combination therapy to help treat the patients in a more efficacious way and actually improve safety.
The story of this goes back years back to about 2017. It's actually a collaboration between OSU researchers and undergraduates at a small institution in Arkansas, Hendrix College. And so, one of the researchers, John Bird, who used to be here, went to Hendrix College as an undergrad. His former mentor sent them some compounds that his undergrads had made. And they decided, sure, we'll test them in AML cell lines. And it turned out one of them worked really well. And then fast forwarding a number of years, the Drug Development Institute here at the Cancer Center got involved. We developed new molecules and ultimately made the molecule that came to be HOSU-53, now known as JBZ-001, which is in clinical trials at the James Cancer Hospital.
Matthew Rand: Where are we in the clinical trial process? And, if all goes well, how soon might this drug realistically start to reach patients?
Chad Bennett, PhD: It's currently in the first clinical trial. So, the process is you have to go through early research testing then get approval from the FDA to go into clinical trials. We licensed this compound out last year to JBEZ Biosciences, and they started the clinical trial in March at the James Cancer Hospital. So, what we're in right now is the dose escalation phase, trying to find the optimal dose to get patients to treat them for cancer. It’s gonna be several years before this is on the market, but it's already being used to treat patients in the James Cancer Hospital.
Matthew Rand: Big picture, how might this change how we go about treating cancers in the future?
Chad Bennett, PhD: This molecule will give clinicians and doctors another tool to treat patients with cancer. We speak of cancer as a monolith, but it's a really diverse set of diseases. And so, what we need is a diverse set of tools to treat them. And this is going to be another tool that can be used in combination with other therapies to help treat patients who are currently not having their cancer effectively controlled or eradicated.
