Antibody-drug conjugates, sometimes called biological missiles, have proven to be powerful cancer-killing weapons. Thirteen ADCs have been approved worldwide, and Pfizer last year bought an ADC company for $43 billion.
But these tumor-blasters have a problem: They tend to fall apart.
Sasha Ebrahimi (he/him), a chemical engineer at GSK, is trying to keep them together. ADCs consist of a conventional toxic chemotherapy chemically linked to an antibody that can guide it to cancer cells, sparing healthy tissues. It’s a complex weld that can easily break down, either immediately in the lab or when a drug is shipped out for trials. “The inherent structural instability,” he said, “prevents a lot of promising candidates from making it into the clinic.”
Last year, Ebrahimi published research on a method for systematically making any ADC more stable by adjusting the solution it’s suspended in. He thinks doing so could cut down development time by a matter of months and potentially allow scientists to resurrect ADCs that were abandoned for their structural frailty.
It’s one of multiple challenges the Illinois native is trying to tackle. A chemistry and math nerd who worked on graphene and battery research as an undergraduate before finding his love for medicine, he sees chemical engineering as a potent tool for advancing cutting-edge biological tools.
Right now, he said, his group is working on chemical modifications that would allow oligonucleotides — strings of DNA that can manipulate genes — to travel directly into the brain. That could vastly expand the application of a tool already used to treat several genetic diseases. “I think we’re going to have some really interesting results to report to the world in the next year,” he said.
— Jason Mast
