Jill M. Kolesar was appointed dean of the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy this year. (Photo provided)
The Gazette uses Instaread to provide audio versions of our articles. Some words may be mispronounced.
Months before the University of Iowa named Jill Kolesar as the next dean of the College of Pharmacy in May, she applied for a $10 million research award in January to develop new ways to fight ovarian cancer.
So when officials at the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, invited Kolesar to the next step in the application process, she asked: “Is it okay to change institutions at this point?”
“And they said sure,” said At the time, he was a research professor at the University of Kentucky, professor of precision medicine, co-director of the Translational Oncology Program at Markey Cancer Center, and director of gynecology. said Kolesar, who also had a joint appointment. Oncology, British Medical College.
Last week, the White House selected from 1,700 applications to award a total of $110 million to projects seeking “solutions to health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately impact women.” 23 award winners were announced.
According to a White House press release, “The University of Iowa is funding $10 million to revolutionize the treatment of late-stage and metastatic ovarian cancer by using personalized nanoparticles to strengthen women’s immune systems.” You will receive dollars.” “Using nanotechnology, the University of Iowa is developing personalized treatments that harness a woman’s own immune system to attack multiple cancers and give more women the treatment they need to live longer. Design nanoparticles.”
Kolesar’s proposal (currently associated with UI) was among six of the 23 award winners highlighted by the White House in its funding announcement, stating that “more than half of women with ovarian cancer ovarian cancer is diagnosed only after the cancer has been cured,” and reiterated the need for ovarian cancer research. Once the disease has metastasized, treatment becomes difficult and survival rates decrease. ”
“Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, and there are few effective treatments,” said Kolesar, who is also the Gene M. Schmidt Chair in Drug Discovery at the University of Iowa. “We have developed a new treatment that is effective and has few or no side effects. This grant will support the first clinical trials of this therapy and make it available to women who desperately need it. We will support you in your next steps.”
“Humanity’s first”
With a $10 million award (of which $8.8 million will go to the UI and $1.2 million to the University of Kentucky and its collaborators), Dr. Kolesar will lead a research team harnessing the power of immunotherapy for ovarian cancer. It turns out.
“Immunotherapy has in some ways changed the world for people with lung cancer and many other cancers,” she told the Gazette. “About 60% of cancers are sensitive to immunotherapy, while others are considered immunologically weak. One is ovarian, one is pancreatic, and one is prostate. So our treatment is to turn these cold tumors into immunologically hot tumors so that the immune system can eradicate the cancer.”
Specifically, Kolesar’s team uses an approach that exploits the production of extracellular vesicles (tiny fluid-filled sacs released by cells) to separate tumor clusters from those that support cancer. We aim to transform it into something that fights cancer.
“So this would be the first of its kind in humans,” she said. “And when it’s being administered to humans for the first time, you always have to step-up the dose to make sure it’s safe. That’s basically what we spend most of our funding on. That’s a big part of it.”
Another part has to do with the manufacturing process they developed.
“So we’re going to hire experts to streamline the manufacturing process and bring down costs.”
Eligible participants must have already been treated for ovarian cancer and had a recurrence, which Kolesar said happens to most people.
“We call this the second-line setting, which is when the ovarian cancer comes back,” she says. “It’s pretty common…almost everyone’s cancer comes back, say 80%.”
Trial participants will receive treatment at the UI’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“If anyone wants to come to Iowa for this clinical trial, we would be happy to accommodate them,” Kolesar said. “But we expect it to be primarily Iowa residents.”
According to the 2024 Iowa Cancer Report, Iowa has the fastest growing new cancer incidence rate in the nation, with 130 ovarian cancer deaths expected in the state this year.
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 12,700 women are expected to die from ovarian cancer nationwide this year. And two out of three women who receive chemotherapy after being diagnosed will experience a recurrence.
“We hope that the combination of anticancer activity and localization ability[of extracellular vesicles]could eradicate small numbers of cancer cells and help the immune system eliminate them. ,” the researchers wrote in the grant summary.
Other funded research
President Joe Biden last year announced new research and development funding as part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which aims to change the way the country approaches and funds women’s health research. Established an agency, the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Women’s Health Sprint, which funded Kolesar’s project and others, was the first major product of the White House effort and attracted applications from 45 states and 34 countries.
As well as bringing the award to Iowa, Kolesar said that at the time she was hired, other funded research was underway in Kentucky, with some of that funding continuing here and some. He said it remained as is.
“One was for a clinical trial, but it was almost completed so there was no point in moving it,” she said.
None of the proceeds from her nine patents or pending patent applications will go to the state of Iowa, but any new patents filed through this ovarian cancer research will be kept at the UI.
When he was selected for the UI dean’s post earlier this year, Kolesar was also involved in two startup companies he founded, VesiCure Technologies and Helix Diagnostics. Although she is currently in Iowa, she will continue to be involved with these Kentucky-based companies.
“However, the university has a conflict of interest policy in place to manage any conflicts of interest,” she says. “That means, for example, you can’t buy things from the company, you can’t work on company work during normal work hours, and you can’t conduct company-sponsored clinical trials.”
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
