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Cancer, according to 51��Ʒ��Ƶ Department of Medicine Assistant Professor , is a “tricky beast.” It changes in response to therapies and, as far as treatment is concerned, it’s sometimes better to think about it as multiple diseases at once.

With a new modular technology to deliver immunotherapies to cancer cells, Lohmueller he believes he has helped create a weapon to slay that beast. And together with collaborator a chemistry professor in 51��Ʒ��Ƶ’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, he co-founded the startup Monarch Therapeutics to translate this innovation from the lab to the market.

“We want to take a multi-targeted approach to keep cancer from escaping,” Lohmueller said. “This adaptable technology that Monarch is developing, I think, will be the key to getting there.”

A Swiss army knife

Some scientific collaborations start because of a paper or a conference presentation — the one between Lohmueller and Deiters began with a couple of undergraduates. A team of students looking for faculty advisors to compete in the sought out both Lohmueller and Deiters, who, after jointly advising several of 51��Ʒ��Ƶ's iGEM teams, saw the potential to combine their respective expertise in a new research project as well.

“Jason is an expert in cell engineering and immunology and has a long track record in that, and my expertise is in synthetic organic chemistry and chemical biology,” Deiters said.

The pair set their sights on CAR T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy where a patient’s own immune cells are engineered to attack cancer cells. It’s an approach that’s found strong and lasting success in treating blood cancers like leukemia, but solid tumors have proven more difficult to crack. Delivering the altered cells to the right parts of the tumor at the right time requires a kind of flexibility that isn’t yet available on that market.

That’s just what Monarch offers. Lohmueller describes their platform as a Swiss army knife: By separating the part of the cell surface receptor that recognizes cancer cells from the part that activates the CAR T cells, it allows researchers to reprogram T cell targeting to different tumors. And making use of powerful covalent bonds between components allows the use of a broad range of small molecule-based targeting motifs called “adaptors.”

Together, that means more flexibility and precision in treating tumors, with potentially reduced side effects.

“We’re trying to make the adaptors orally available eventually, so patients could take them at home, and they wouldn’t have to come to a physician’s office for an infusion,” Deiters said. “And that, paired with the much lower manufacturing cost of small molecules, will hopefully then drive down the cost of these very expensive therapies.”