Conquering Cancer: Joining Science and Engineering

by Joyce Graff

On Wednesday, March 16, 2011, I attended a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol­ogy (MIT) as part of their celebration of the 150th anniversary of MIT. The conference, “Conquering Cancer through the Convergence of Science and Engineering,” was a fascinating day of talks organized by Tyler E. Jacks, Director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

It was a very impressive roster of speakers, includ­­ing multiple Nobel Prize winners, and a powerful display of the Koch Institute and MIT. As Dr. Jacks said, he feels that MIT is now in the right time and the right place to finally make significant progress in the War on Cancer. Time because of the maturation of technologies like miniaturization, battery life, and nanoparticles; place in Boston and MIT, surrounded by some of the finest hospitals in the world, by numerous pharmaceutical companies large and small, and by many innovative startup companies.

In 2002, cancer became the leading killer disease in the world—surpassing tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV. 70% of the cases of cancer will emerge in the developing world, offering another layer of difficulty in providing care. For millions of people in the world, it takes longer than one day to get to a doctor, even in major cities.

Cancer is primarily a disease of age, as it takes time to accumulate the genetic damage or “hits” that lead to cancer. Part of the problem is our success in increasing longevity. In 1910, the average life expectancy in the United States was 45. As we live longer, our risk of cancer rises. Now, with an average life expec­tancy many decades beyond that, the rates of cancer rise with the average age of the population. Our chal­lenge is not only to extend life, but to extend the time in which we enjoy wellness before cancer risks rise.

Some of the key problems to be conquered in cancer are:

• Prevention
• Vaccines
• Mechanisms of delivery that can transport medications to specific microscopic areas
• and in particular, Delivery to poorly vascularized areas

These challenges are not entirely medical. They also need the problem-solving abilities of engineers, physicists and chemists—many of the skills for which MIT is also famous.
When drug is injected into the body, only about 1% of the drug makes it to the tumor of interest. Dr. Robert S. Langer showed us the nanoparticles he designed to treat cancer. These are particles about the size of three protein molecules, “decorated” with a molecular zipcode, a peptide seqence that attaches to the surface. In order to further increase the amount of drug delivered to the tumor, they can use two kinds of particles—one to attach to the tumor and serve as a beacon to attract more of the drug-bearing particles*.

Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Professor of Chemistry at University of North Carolina, shared with us some of the innovations now available to medicine thanks to colleagues in other sciences: an electrode delivered by a catheter into a pancreatic cancer tumor, infusing the tumor with biologics to intensify the effect of the drug on the tumor while limiting the side effects. He has invented a new way of creating nanoparticles that are not only small, they can be produced in a particular shape that will allow them to enter the cell and bind with specific proteins in the body. There are significant challenges in getting experts from various scientific disciplines to work together—they have different backgrounds, basic principles, and enormous differences in vocabulary. But it’s exciting. Biology is a different science from physics and chemistry, where you can identify, quantify, and establish laws. In biology, we don’t always know what the variables are, or how to control them. Identifying and cataloging those variables is helping to put us on the right path. For engineers, it is uncomfortable and also exciting to model systems with analysis of multiple unknowns.

*See Nova’s interview with Dr. Langer and their animation of this invention. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-stuff-smarter.html especially (minutes 40–45).

As printed in the VHL Family Forum 19:2, April/May 2011. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.