Kristopher R. Bosse, MD (Damon Runyon Physician Scientist '16-'20) of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is engineering a new drug to selectively target neuroblastoma cells and deliver a chemotherapeutic agent into the cells. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the developing nervous system that usually occurs as a solid tumor in a child's chest or abdomen, and is the most common cancer in infants. After discovering a protein found on the surface of cancer cells called GPC2, he and his colleagues created an antibody that can recognize GPC2 and linked it to chemotherapy drug to form an “antibody-drug conjugate” (ADC). When tested in human cell cultures and mouse models, it successfully killed cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. The study was published in the journal Cancer Cell, which featured their findings as the cover story.
