Cancer.
The word itself evokes fear. Millions of Americans are diagnosed with cancer every year, and almost everyone will be affected by it, whether personally or through someone close to them.
BYU alumnus Philip Low is working to change those statistics. Low, who graduated from BYU in 1971 and received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 1975, is currently the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University where he and his lab are making major breakthroughs in cancer research. He will present this research at the Honored Alumni Lecture on October 10 at 11:00 a.m. in room 1170 of the Talmage Building.
Low’s research, which began by studying how cells absorb foreign molecules, found that an anti-cancer agent could be attached to a vitamin carrier that would specifically target diseased cells.
“The old strategy of administering a very poisonous drug and allowing it to distribute indiscriminately into all cells of the body and thereby poison healthy cells and diseased cells alike is archaic medicine,” he said. “As we develop the ability to target drugs very selectively to the pathologic cells, the older drugs that distribute indiscriminately into all cells will be avoided.”
The research also led to targeted imaging agents, which deliver fluorescent dyes to cancer cells, allowing surgeons to see and remove more malignant tissue in one surgery than ever before.
“We’re beginning these trials now in the US in ovarian cancer, in lung cancer, in kidney cancer, and we’ll be expanding in the future to a number of other cancers . . . ,” he said. “Our hope is that we’ll soon be able to mark with very bright fluorescent molecules all of the malignant disease in any cancer patient, making it much easier to remove all of the cancer.”
Low’s targeted therapeutic and imaging agent technologies are also being investigated for potential use in inflammatory disease patients, such as those with rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, atherosclerosis, pulmonary fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, and asthma. If successful, these drugs have the potential to radically increase the quality of life of cancer and inflammatory disease patients.
“We hope that we are able to develop therapies for cancer that both limit the toxicity that each patient experiences and increase the chances of prolongation of their life and hopefully in many case . . . even provide a cure from the disease,” Low said.
