-
By raising your hand,
-
how many of you know
at least one person on the screen?
-
Wow, it's almost a full house.
-
It's true, they are very famous
in their fields.
-
And do you know what
all of them have in common?
-
They all died of pancreatic cancer.
-
However, although it's very,
very sad this news,
-
it's also thanks to their personal stories
-
that we have raised awareness
of how lethal this disease can be.
-
It's become the third cause
of cancer deaths,
-
and only eight percent of the patients
will survive beyond five years.
-
That's a very tiny number,
-
especially if you compare it
with breast cancer,
-
where the survival rate
is almost 90 percent.
-
So it doesn't really come as a surprise
-
that being diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer
-
means facing an almost
certain death sentence.
-
What's shocking, though,
is that in the last 40 years,
-
this number hasn't changed a bit,
-
while much more progress has been made
-
with other types of tumors.
-
So how can we make pancreatic cancer
treatment more effective?
-
As a biomedical entrepreneur,
-
I like to work on problems
that seem impossible,
-
understanding their limitations
-
and trying to find new,
innovative solutions
-
that can change their outcome.
-
The first piece of bad news
with pancreatic cancer
-
is that your pancreas is in the middle
of your belly, literally.
-
It's depicted in orange on the screen.
-
But you can barely see it
-
until I remove all the other
organs in front.
-
It's also surrounded
by many other vital organs,
-
like the liver, the stomach,
the bile duct.
-
And the ability of the tumor
to grow into those organs
-
is the reason why pancreatic cancer
-
is one of the most painful tumor types.
-
The hard-to-reach location
also prevents the doctor
-
from surgically removing it,
-
as is routinely done
for breast cancer, for example.
-
So all of these reasons leave
chemotherapy as the only option
-
for the pancreatic cancer patient.
-
This brings us to the second
piece of bad news.
-
Pancreatic cancer tumors have
very few blood vessels.
-
Why should we care
about the blood vessel of a tumor?
-
Let's think for a second
how chemotherapy works.
-
The drug is injected in the vein
-
and it navigates throughout the body
until it reaches the tumor site.
-
It's like driving on a highway,
trying to reach a destination.
-
But what if your destination
doesn't have an exit on the highway?
-
You will never get there.
-
And that's exactly the same problem
-
for chemotherapy and pancreatic cancer.
-
The drugs navigate
throughout all of your body.
-
They will reach healthy organs,
-
resulting in high toxic effect
for the patients overall,
-
but very little will go to the tumor.
-
Therefore, the efficacy is so limited.
-
To me, it seems very counterintuitive
to have a whole-body treatment
-
to target a specific organ.
-
However, in the last 40 years,
-
a lot of money, research
and effort have gone towards
-
finding new, powerful drugs
to treat pancreatic cancer,
-
but nothing has been done
in changing the way
-
we deliver them to the patient.
-
So after two pieces of bad news,
-
I'm going to give you
good news, hopefully.
-
With a collaborator at MIT
-
and the Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston,
-
we have revolutionized
the way we treat cancer,
-
by making localized
drug delivery a reality.
-
We are basically parachuting you
on top of your destination,
-
avoiding your having to drive
all around the highway.
-
We have embedded the drug
into devices that look like this one.
-
They are flexible enough
that they can be folded
-
to fit into the catheter,
-
so the doctor can implant it
directly on top of the tumor
-
with minimally invasive surgery.
-
But they are solid enough
that once they are positioned
-
on top of the tumor,
-
they will act as a cage.
-
They will actually
physically prevent the tumor
-
from entering other organs,
-
controlling the mestatasis.
-
The devices are also biodegradable.
-
That means that once in the body,
-
they start dissolving,
-
delivering the drug only locally,
slowly and more effectively
-
than what is done with the current
whole-body treatment.
-
In pre-clinical study,
we have demonstrated
-
that this localized approach
-
is able to improve by 12 times
the response to treatment.
-
So we took a drug that is already known
-
and by just delivering it locally
where it's needed the most,
-
we allow a response
that is 12 times more powerful,
-
reducing the systemic toxic effect.
-
We are working relentlessly to bring
this technology to the next level.
-
We are finalizing the pre-clinical testing
-
and the animal model required
prior to asking the FDA for approval
-
for clinical trials.
-
Currently, the majority of patients
will die from pancreatic cancer.
-
We are hoping that one day,
-
we can reduce their pain,
extend their life
-
and potentially make pancreatic cancer
-
a curable disease.
-
By rethinking the way we deliver the drug,
-
we don't only make it
more powerful and less toxic,
-
we are also opening the door
to finding new innovative solutions
-
for almost all other impossible problems
-
in pancreatic cancer patients and beyond.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(Applause)