A New Route for ‘Powerful’ Cancer Treatment
Meanwhile, the Columbia University study showed that inhalable exosomes are a unique delivery method for IL-12 — and could help solve a major problem that’s plagued this promising cancer treatment for decades.
Called “one of the most powerful immunotherapy agents ever discovered” in a 2022 literature review, IL-12 showed serious side effects that stalled research in the 1980s , sparking an ongoing search for new delivery methods that continues today. In 2022 and 2023, Big Pharma companies including AstraZenca, Moderna, and Bristol Myers Squib reduced their involvement with IL-12 treatment research, leaving the field open to smaller biotech companies working on a variety of drug-delivery approaches that could make IL-12 safe and effective in humans.
These include injecting it directly into tumors, encasing it in various types of particles, masking the drug so it is activated only in cancer cells, and using IL-12 mRNA, which essentially turns tumor cells into IL-12–producing factories. Another IL-12 mRNA drug, from Pittsburgh-based Krystal Biotech, received a fast-track designation from the US Food and Drug Administration in February 2024 for an inhaled lung cancer treatment that packages mRNA for IL-12 and IL-2 inside an engineered virus.
And of course, there is Dr. Cheng’s inhalable treatment, culminating decades of work across three burgeoning fields.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.