The philosophy of cancer treatment has always been “no pain, no gain,” and shutting down the targeted pathway and the idea of “maximum tolerated dose,” explained Ben Zeskind, co-founder, president and CEO of Immuneering. Now Zeskind and his clinical-stage biotech company are attempting to try something new in the field of pancreatic cancer.
Instead of shutting down a pathway round the clock and then dosing a patient to the maximum dose that can be tolerated, the company is developing a new approach that enables it to periodically shut down that pathway and then “hit the disease very hard for a certain period of time.” Early clinical results of this approach targeting the Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) pathway are promising.
In our Season 2 of the Pivot podcast — spanning from April through June — we focus on innovations in oncology, beginning with Immuneering’s lofty goal of making cancer manageable like a chronic disease.
You can watch the entire video here: