Bringing Light | Bert Klasey, Chris Baron & James Allen Smith from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.
A toxin produced by scorpions to paralyze their prey is the backbone of a new imaging agent that could enable cancer surgeons to perform more precise cancer surgeries.
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In the video above, Blaze Bioscience’s scientific founder, Dr. James Olson, describes how the scorpion-derived protein “happens to bind to cancer cells, but not to normal tissues.” A team from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute attached a flourescent dye to the protein to create what they call “tumor paint.”
The agent would be injected into a patient before tumor removal surgery, attaching to cancerous cells and making them visible under near-infrared light. In concept, it would allow surgeons to see precisely which tissues are cancerous, so they can remove as much of the tumor as possible while leaving as much healthy tissue as possible.
Currently, surgeons use MRIs or PET to visualize a tumor before surgery.
Blaze has just picked up $9 million in Series B financing to begin clinical trials of the imaging agent “shortly,” the company said in a release today. The money came largely from investors who participated in an $8.5 million Series A financing that closed early this year.
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Blaze is also developing other optimized peptide drug candidates in collaboration with Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center.
Meanwhile, Olson’s research is also the basis of another Seattle biotech, Presage Biosciences, which is enabling drug companies to test potential treatments in living tumors in a lab, to compare side-by-side how well they kill cancer cells.
[Image credit: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center]
