A company in the Purdue Research Park is collaborating with university researchers and St. Jude Children’s Hospital on improving the treatment of leukemia.
Tymora Analytical Operations is working to pinpoint the proteins inside cells affected by the disease. Chief Technology Officer Anton Iliuk says doing so will improve treatment options and make drug delivery more efficient.
“Rather than trying a drug to see if it works, six months later maybe it does not work, then you have to try to find a different drug to see if that works,” he says, “instead, you can immediately find what actually is the cause of the leukemia and then try to tailor the drug regiment directly to that particular individual, so it’s more personalized.”
A $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health is funding the research.
Iliuk says once the process is finalized, they hope to move onto clinical trials using samples from patients at St. Jude’s.
“If it works the way we think it should work, then I think it would be very good to try to help put the doctors on the right path,” he says. “I think leukemia is just one of the stages. I think we can potentially move into different directions as well.”
