2021 Research
By: Franko Rahimi
Scientific progress is often made by building on the work of others. In 2018, our foundation supported Dr. Tischler’s research at Tufts wich resulted in a paper and presentation of the Ian GIST model at the 5th International Symposium of Pheochromocytoma in Sydney, Australia.
In late 2020, Dr. Tischler’s findings and paper were noticed by Dr. Florian Muller who was at M.D. Anderson at the time. Dr. Muller asked for and obtained a sample of Ian GIST PDX from Dr. Tischler for his work on devloping a Cancer Drug. Dr. Muller and a number of collaborators published their work in the very prestigious journal, NATURE. In fact, Ian GIST Cells are cited in the paper titled “An enolase inhibitor for the targeted treatment of ENO1-deleted cancers”. In a recent email exchange with Dr. Muller, he indicated that the Enolase inhibitors did indeed show preferential tocicity to SDH xenografts. These are of course very very preliminary data and my undersatnding is that it would take a lot more work for something like this to actually turn into a usable cancer drug.
It’s also worth noting that even if a very effective drug against SDH deficient cancers (Ian’s cancer with a very small number of patients) could be developed, it is very unlikely that any drug manufacturer would produce such a drug for such a small population of patients. However, if such a drug was also effective, even to a much smaller degree (say 50%), against some very big cancers with 10’s of thousands of patients; then the pharmaceutical industry would take a very hard look at that drug.
Dr. Muller has since left M.D. Anderson and joined a BIOventure company, Sporos, Bioventures. His work and experiemnts with SDH deficient cancers may continue by other colleagues in the cancer research community. We are currently looking to see if we can support some of this work.
Scientific progress in the world of cancer drugs is very complicated, time consuming and slow. At FOR IAN FOUNDATION, we feel proud that we were able to contribute in a small way and will continue to look for opportunities to contribute further.