RESEARCHERS VIE FOR $100G GRANT
Hospital scientists seek medical cures
A trio of Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers are vying for a $100,000 grant to fund their studies into medical miracles that could transform the way millions of patients are treated for aggressive brain cancer, Type 2 diabetes or epilepsy.
For the sixth straight year, the hospital’s Bright Futures Prize Competition will allow the public to pick which of the three researchers will get the grant. The winner of the online vote will be announced Nov. 9.
Neuroscientist Dr. ChoiFong Cho is hoping to support her development of a “guided missile” molecule that will target glioblastomas, an aggressive form of brain cancer that 14,000 Americans are diagnosed with every year.
Cho told the Herald it
LIFE SCIENCES
was a childhood friend’s brain cancer diagnosis that kept her focused on advancing a treatment for the devastating cancer.
“I didn’t have much of an idea of what it entailed,” Cho said, “but it always stuck in my mind the severity of the disease.”
Her lab has developed a molecule that can pass through the blood-brain barrier — a protective element that keeps harmful things out of the brain but makes delivering cancer drugs all the more difficult — and target cancer cells to deliver a payload, be it a chemotherapy drug or other treatment. It’s been tested in mice, but needs more refinement before it can be used in humans.
Another finalist, materials scientist Dr. Yuhan Lee, is working on a pill that could reverse Type 2 diabetes by mimicking the benefit that diabetics get from bariatric surgery.
Lee’s drug temporarily coats the stomach and parts of the intestine to keep the body from absorbing glucose. He said the pill would make the benefits of bariatric surgery available to swaths of diabetics who can’t get the surgery.
“Our idea was instead of doing surgery, can you put all the benefits into a small pill?” Lee said.
More than 29 million Americans have diabetes.
Neurologist Dr. Ellen Bubrick, meanwhile, is developing an epilepsy treatment using low-intensity ultrasound for patients who aren’t able to use traditional anti-seizure drugs.
The low-intensity ultrasound would be concentrated on a portion of the skull to disrupt brain cells and “quiet” the groups of neurons that in epileptic patients discharge abnormally and cause seizures. Bubrick said she hopes that with funding, “we’ll see a significant reduction in seizures.”