The two NUS Medicine researchers and co-founders of AGeM Bio, Dr Sarah Ho and Dr Woo Jun Yung , with Clinical Associate Professor Yeo Tseng Tsai from the National University Hospital’s Division of Neurosurgery - The Straits Times
This targeted therapy – designed to kill aggressive tumours and activate anti-cancer immunity – builds on a similar drug that the NUS Medicine scientists first used to treat dogs and cats with terminal cancers. The researchers developed a technology to insert large amounts of yeast-based genes into the stem cells that would react with the anti-fungal drugs.The modified stem cells act like suicide bombers, loading the toxic 5FU around the tumour to kill it, said Dr Ho.
“Interferon beta activates the body’s immune system, allowing the immune cells to attack the tumour so that you get a long-term suppression of the tumour,” said Ho. In January, Ho and Woo set up their biotech start-up AGeM Bio to scale up their animal and human cancer therapies. The team is currently doing more pre-clinical studies and is preparing a dossier to submit to the Health Sciences Authority. They will produce the treatment doses at the Advanced Cell Therapy and Research Institute, Singapore.