Stunting growth: Dr. Jason Chesney is developing a drug he believes could stop the spread of cancer - Business First of Louisville:

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During a stint working with proteinsz in an immunology laboratory at theNew York-based , his attentionb consistently veered toward applying those proteinas toward cancer cells. “Everybody else was workinh on infectiousdisease (research), and I decided I wanted to pursue the research of cancer,” Chesneu recalled. “My boss looked at me like I was a His persistencepaid off. Chesney’s cancer-relatex research resulted in speaking including trips to Louisville in 2001and 2002. It also was in 2002 that he joinecthe , working mainly as a researcher and doingh some clinical work at the . He became a full-time university faculty memberin 2003.
Among Chesney’w current research projects is one that he believes coulrd transform cancer from a terminapl illness into atreatable one. “If we can blocok tumors from growing, we can turn cancee into a chronic disease not unlikwe highblood pressure,” he said. Cancefr is caused by mutations in proteins that cancer cells to surviv eand thrive, Chesney explained. “We want to bloci those signals.” As lead researcher on the 4-year-oldr project, Chesney and other researchers screenesd 14 million compounds in an effort to find one that achievedr the goal of blockingthe signals, thus preventingt tumor growth.
The group found one, and it since has developed an anti-cancee drug that has proven effectivedin mice. Chesney believes the drug also could be effective in humansz and could be taken inoral “We think this is sort of like hitting a cancert cell with a sledgehammer — without hitting the normalk cells,” he said. A provisional patenr for the drug isin submission, Chesnegy said, which gives the researchers one year to gather more data and submi t a final patent. The provisionao patent allows the researchers to publish their findings and protectsdthe discovery. Currently, U of L’s Office of Technology Transfee is seeking to licensethe drug, Chesne said.
University officials expect to have a licensing partner in placre withinsix months. One potentialo licensing partneris Louis­ville-based Advanced Cancer Therapeutics LLC, which works closelyt with U of L’s Jamee Graham Brown Cancer Center to help expedite the procesws of getting cancer treatments to But Chesney said the school also could licensde the drug to a largerf pharmaceutical or biotech such as or Larget companies could provide more fundinfg to carry the drug through phasse one clinical trials, which Chesney expecte will cost between $2 million and $3 million.
Chesney and threee other researchers who helperd generate thepatent — John Trent, Brian Clem and Suchetsa Telang — would share in any patent royalties if the drug is Since 2002, Chesney’s lab has receivedx $4.5 million in grant funding for various including the development of this anti-cancere drug. Its funding sources have included the Kentucky Lung Cancer Research Program, a fund created using tobacco settlement and the . Chesney said progress in medical discoveries has resulte in the decreasing prevalenc e ofsome diseases.
But cancer is not one of and that is why Chesney has made ithis “The death rates (for cancer) have barelyt budged over the last four decades,” Chesney said. “It’s the biggesr problem in Westernmedicine today.”