Dr. Cheng-Han Lee accelerates the drug development process to provide those facing the deadliest of cancers more treatment options.
By Fabian Mayer
Dr. Cheng-Han Lee is on the front lines of cancer diagnosis. As a clinical pathologist specializing in ovarian and endometrial cancers, Lee sees firsthand the devastating impact of the disease. In his current role as the Sawin-Baldwin Chair in Ovarian Cancer, Lee has expanded his scope with the goal of improving treatment and lifespans of women with these cancers.
“As a pathologist, we are in a unique position where we make the diagnosis, therefore we know what is causing the most harm. I’m able to position my resources to bring forward better therapies based on my findings,” says Lee.
Lee decided to focus his research on some of the most deadly forms of cancer he regularly sees, known as dedifferentiated endometrial and ovarian cancers. Dedifferentiated tumours are relatively rare, but they are extremely aggressive. And despite advances in diagnostics, the life expectancies of those affected continue to be extremely short — measured in months rather than years.
“We’ve gotten very good at predicting who’s going to die, but we can’t do anything about it,” says Lee. “That’s a very frustrating and helpless feeling, which is what motivates me to take it one step further to help the patients who have that disease.”
Lee harnessed a unique approach in hopes of accelerating the often painstaking drug development process. Rather than test individual drugs on patients, he and his team used cancerous tissue donated by women who underwent surgery to remove tumours. They then split that tissue up into tiny pieces and were able to test a multitude of drugs to see if any were effective.
“That identification process enabled us to test drugs that you wouldn’t have thought would be effective in killing cancer cells,” he says. “We’re able to test thousands of drugs and really expedite that drug development process.”
One of those drugs turned out to be surprisingly effective in slowing the aggressive growth of the specific cancer cells Lee was targeting. Digoxin has been around for decades and is typically used to improve heart strength and efficiency in patients with congestive heart failure. In the next phase of research, Lee and his team hope to identify another drug to pair with digoxin to maximize its effectiveness.
“Increasingly in cancer treatment, we’re not just talking about giving a patient one drug; we want to do a combination treatment,” says Lee. “It’s kind of like playing chess; you’re making two moves at a time on cancer so that it doesn’t have an escape.”
Honouring excellence in cancer research.
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