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A postgraduate student at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has won top prize in a national inventors’ competition for a new combo approach to kill cancer using bacteria and drug-filled molecular capsules.
Ian Cheong, PhD, is the grand prize winner of the 2007 Collegiate Inventors Competition, hosted by the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The award was announced November 1 at the California Institute of Technology campus where Cheong and 10 other finalists presented their inventions to a panel of eight judges, including several Hall of Fame inductees. Along with the award, Cheong will receive a $25,000 cash prize and $15,000 will go to his adviser, cancer researcher Bert Vogelstein, MD.
“It’s a great way to deliver drug therapies,” said Vogelstein, professor and Co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “The approach could be used in a variety of targeted therapies for cancer, and, because many drugs can be packaged this way, it could have general utility.”
In designing the molecular package, Cheong’s goal was to find a mode of transport that avoided healthy cells and delivered cancer-killing chemicals to the diseased cells alone. His solution was to add specially packaged chemotherapy to a bacterial attack against tumors.
“Packaged” cancer drugs currently are available in microscopic fatty capsules called liposomes, which gravitate to tumors because they are too large to fit through the skins of tightly woven blood vessels surrounding normal tissue and small enough to slide through tumor vasculature.
Before the chemo packs moved into place within the tumor, Cheong added genetically modified bacteria that have a special affinity for the oxygen-starved core of tumors. The bacteria secrete an enzyme, which Cheong dubbed liposomase, which melts away the outer layer of liposomes, releasing their anticancer contents.
Tests in nearly 100 mice wiped out large and small tumors and cured more than two-thirds of them. The report was published in the November 24, 2006 issue of Science.
Cheong said that a laboratory colleague urged him to enter the competition. “I’m really glad he encouraged me to compete. It’s been an incredible experience meeting all of the inventors and sharing my work with them,” he said.
Cheong, 33, is a native of Singapore and received his PhD in cell and molecular medicine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Before pursuing a career in cancer research, Cheong was an attorney in a Singapore law firm. Working on the technical aspects of some cases, Cheong said he was drawn to the creative aspects of scientific research. He is completing postdoctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Panelists for the competition made their selections from more than 100 undergraduate and graduate applicants at 70 colleges and universities across the country and Canada. In addition to the grand prize, two other finalists received cash awards of $15,000.
Sponsors of the competition are the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Abbott Fund, the philanthropic arm of Abbott Laboratories.
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