UCF's Dr. Khaled on Delivering 'Cure' to Cancer Cells (Audio)

SMP twenty one thirty reached last May. Right now, the SMP of four tenths of one percent to Dow also hired by four tenths of one percent, up seventy points to seventeen thousand, nine hundred ninety has stand up for a gain of point one percent. Ten You're up eight thirty seconds yield one point seven oh percent. Gold unchanged at twelve forty seven fifty crude trading above fifty dollars of barrel fifty forty two. Right now on West Texas Intermediate it is up by one and a half percent.

I'm Charlie Pelleton. That's a bloom Bred business flash. You're listening to taking stock with on Bluebird Radio. Were are broadcasting live at Pershing's Inside Twenties sixteen conference at the Higher Regency in Orlando of Florida. And you know, planning for retirement means more than just having a personal plan to assure that you have enough money to enjoy your older age. It's also about having a health plan and

being healthy in order to enjoy it. Here to tell us more is Dr Annette Khalid, Cancer Division Head and Associate Professor at the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Florida College of Medicine. Dr Khaleen, thank you very much for being here. Now. I know that you spoke on the panel having to do with developing the next generation of treatments for cancer. I wonder if you could just speak a little bit about why this is such a crucial issue for all of the attendees here

at this Pershing conference. So we're really at a or front right now and cancer research where we're making discoveries that are going to advanced cures for patients. But we've discovered that in order to personalize cure for a specific patients tumor, we had a lot more treatments that we have currently available. In fact, only about maybe two to three percent of patients actually have a type of tumor

that can be treated with currently available drugs. We need a lot more drugs in the marketplace, and that's what labs like mine are doing, is we're discovering new drugs and trying to move them forward to commercialize them and

get them into patients. That is stunning though, to say such a small amount of tumors are really only truly treatable with the current the current drugs, the current protocols you are on in the midst of something that's very important, because to cure cancer seems like the big thing is to figure out how it works and and get in the middle of that process so the cancer cannot develop, right, So talk to us about c T twenty P. It's a molecule that gets in the way of something called

a chaperone in which is a key part of a tumor growing and developing and ultimately killing someone if you can't stop it. So you can, you've defined our platform very well. We actually discovered a therapeutic that is a small peptide that's really made of amino acids that are part of your bodies, you know, normal cells, and this peptide actually goes to cancer cells and specifically kills them. And the way it does it is because it interferes

with very large machinery. It's also found in cells. It's called the chaperonein, and what chaperones do is they basically fold proteins in their final shapes so they can function. You know, d NA makes rna, RNA makes protein, but proteins don't stop. Their proteins have to have an activity, but they have to have the right shape to be able to have their activities. And that's what chaperoneins do. They actually make proteins reach the right shape so they

can function and do their jobs. So cancer cells need a lot of proteins and they need a lot of proteins in the right shape. And so our pep tide blocks the shaperone and specifically in cancer cells and thereby reducing the number of proteins that confunction and cancer cells and cancer cells will then die. Dr Khalid maybe explain the kind of cancer that we're talking about here, because I understand that if you have cancer or tumor in one part of your body and then it metastasized, it

shifts to other parts of your body. Now we're getting into an area where you can imagine people need a lot of help to just correct correct. So so usually the tumors localized or it's a primary tumor, a lot of treatments might be able to you know, surgeries or even you know, toxic compounds, chemotherapeutics, radiation can really deal with the localized tumors. It's when these tumors, as you mentioned,

leave that primary location when they spread. They spread and they moved to the brain, when they moved to the lungs or the bones areas, they're really hard to treat and really hard to find, and so it's a challenge to find the treatments drugs that will actually help these patients eliminate the spread. And what we do with our treatment is actually target those cells specifically, we're targeting these cells that rove around and preventing them from basically moving.

A lot of your work right now focusing on breast cancer. Correct We're using breast cancer is our model because it really affects so many women and it's really a challenge because when it metaticizes, there's very little choices out there. What about raising money to do exactly exactly so that's that's the challenge that we have. So you know where our ideas are very vulnerable because we don't have funding to see them through. And this is where we need funds.

We need organizations like the Breast Cancer Research Foundation that funds studies like mine to be able to develop these ideas that we have into something that can be turned into a cancer drug for patients. Tell us a bit about and I'm sure one of the reasons is that you need money. And let's just underscore this that Dr

Nekhalid is that the Burnett's School of Biomedical Sciences. And again, if you want to send some money or help our research co right ahead, yes, please, yes, because we're what we're doing is not only helping cancer, you know, survivors, preventing cancer, um menistetic cancer is not just breast cancer. There's so many cancers that you know, prostate, long liver, all these ministhetic sites. What we do can help those cancers as well. I just said that one the reason

it's probably costly. You're using you know, you're harnessing nanotechnology for example. Tell us about some of the tools that are that you're developing and using to do this groundbreaking cancer search and discovery. Correct. So as we have a drug and we have a target, we have to get our drug to that target. And that's where now technology comes in. We can use these small nanoparticles and they're

actually made of a polyester polymer. It's biodegradable, and we can load up these little nanoparticles with our PEP tide injected into you know, a patient, and have those nanta particles find the tumors and deliver our pep tide to those tumors. I wonder if you can describe also the idea of finding the right doctor or the right treatment. How does a patient go about doing this? Because it seems as though you could go online, but you could also end up in a place that is not necessarily

going to give you stuff that's useful. You've actually hit a real problem in the field because you can have a lot of clinical trials and academic centers, but there are very few academic centers are accessible to all the patients. If you live in you know, a major city, find But what if you don't, how do you find these these treatments, these clinics. Your own doctor is still the best place to start with. But you know, we have

to fix that. We have to make these clinical trials and these things in a way that's accessible to patients, not just you know, those patients that happen to live in an academic area. I'm still forging of those little polyous and your polymers who are grabbing the peptides and moving them around. It just it's just it's so it's fascinating U as far as very top down, we're in

election year. If you were suddenly the czar of of on BAT team finding a cure for cancer, what would you say about the big system we have in place that needs to be changed. It needs to move forward. You're obviously mentioning money. Well, key is money. So first we need to put more money into these ideas. There there are thousands and thousands and thousands of scientists working on cures. We need money to move forward so we can develop our cures into break twos that can be

developed in technologies. But more importantly, once we've got the technology in hand, we need to facilitate the process of getting through you know, intellectual property. The patent process takes way too long. I mean, waiting around for five years to get a patent issue it so you can commercialize

your technology. That's way too much time to waste. We need to work with FDA to get things to happen faster, so we're not spending you know, eight to ten years waiting through all the clinical trials and everything to get to that point. So there's a lot of things that have to work handaha with government, with regulatory agencies to make things happen for the scientists who are developing new technologies. These new technologies primarily being developed in the United States,

now all over the world. The United States is definitely a leader. You know, over fifty of our universities are working on basic science research that will lead to new discoveries education. You've been on this road for some time obviously, so much hard work to get to the level where you are. If you're if you're advising some young person about going into this field as a doctor, a scientist, someone who is working on the technology or even selling, I mean, what what advice would you give them at

this point? Is this a growing field? This is a tough field. It's a tough field. But you follow your heart. That's what I tell everybody. You love what you do. You have to absolutely have a passion for what you do and if you have have that, you'll be successful. So I trained students in my lab, and I've got students who work in by a technology technology transfer who are doing academic like I'm doing myself. So I've trained students who do all sorts of different things with their degrees.

Just follow your passion, follow your hearts, what I tell them. We are in Florida, so I do want to ask you a little bit about melanoma and carcinoma. You've got to because this is, you know, it seems like something that only you avoid when you're you know, young and and and healthy, but it can come back and hurt you later later on. What kind of advances or what

kind of treatments are are currently being worked on. Some great immunotherapy is coming out there, teaching your body to you know, function and kill the cancers themselves, enabling your your body to defend yourself. And of course where your sun screen and where your hat if you're in Florida. It sounds like a good idea. I want to thank

you very much for spending time with us. Dr Annette Khali is the ahead of the Cancer Division and Associate professor the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. You're listening to Taking Stockh'm PIM Fox my co host Kathleen Hayes. We are broadcasting live at Persian's Inside Conference at the Hyatt Agency in Orlando. This year marks eighteen years of insight, eighteen

years committed to the success of advisors. Were here with over two thousand financial professionals from all over the globe. And you're listening to the Bloomberg Radio