Dr. Richard Rovin, a neurosurgeon at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, came home from work in 2015, and his wife, a nurse, asked if Zika virus might be a treatment or cure for glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, after learning that the virus can infect neural stem cells.
Rovin and his partner, virologist Parvez Akhtar, PhD, quickly determined that Zika virus readily infects and kills glioblastoma stem cells. The Zika virus also naturally crosses the blood-brain barrier. Taken together, Rovin and Akhtar knew they were on to something important.
“This is like the (Sen.) John McCain and (Sen.) Ted Kennedy brain cancer. Treatment is limited, and there is little or no chance of survival. There is no curative treatment. This could be huge if it works.”
Rovin and Akhtar founded UP Oncolytics nearly four years ago at Rosalind Fraklin University’s Helix 51 Incubator in North Chicago with lab space and available business resources nearby to make treatment of brain cancer possible. Rovin said it could take eight years.
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science announced doubling of space at the Helix 51 incubator on March 12 in North Chicago, two weeks after saying the Chicago Clinical Research Institute will be doing clinical trials for new drugs at the school’s Innovation and Research Park.
Michael Rosen, the managing director of Rosalind Franklin’s Innovation and Research Park as well as Helix 51, said when the incubator was started seven years ago it was designed to help biomedical entrepreneurs get the necessary support to ready their product for a permanent space.
Since then, Rosen said the initial building was not large enough to accommodate the number of inventors who wanted to locate there. A floor of the Innovation and Research Park building was renovated to become incubator space and is connected to the original incubator.
“These are two contiguous buildings with wet lab space,” Rosen said. “This is our niche. We are the only biomedical incubator in Lake County and between Milwaukee and northern Cook County. These are early-stage companies with one to four people.”
Rovin said the incubator meets needs of his start-up business eliminating the necessity to spend time or money to hire business professionals. There is also business help from people like Dimitri Nwankwo.
Nwankwo is the entrepreneur in residence for both the incubator and the research park as well as working for parttime for UP Oncolytics. Rovin said incubator help comes from more than Nwankwo.
“It’s been a lifeline of support which so valuable,” Rovin said. “There is access to lawyers, regulatory (consultants) and business people who have the resources we need.”
Rosen is also excited about the addition of the Chicago Clinical Research Institute to the research park. He said the only places in the area which do Phase 1 clinical trials of potentially new drugs are a five-bed location at Northwestern University for cancer only and AbbVie, which only does the trials for its own medicines.
Nusrat Deen, the co-founder of Chicago Clinical Research Institute and both its president and CEO, said it does Phase 2, 3 and 4 clinical trials now but not Phase 1. She helped start the enterprise in 2008. She was seeking a location and Rosalind Franklin knew there was a need.
“It was a perfect fit,” Deen said. “There isn’t an inpatient facility in Chicago. We need 24/7 monitoring from anywhere, from three to five days or a week to 10 days. We can do them for some of the companies at the incubator.”
Before a drug can get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it must complete Phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials. Deen said Phase 1 is done with 20 paid healthy volunteers to determine the medicine’s safety.
Deen said Phase 2 determines the appropriate dose and efficiency of the drug with a small group of people—20 to 100—while Phase 3 does much of the same thing with a much larger assemblage of individuals.
Steve Markwell, the senior scientist for UP Oncolytics, said he is currently testing the use of the Zika virus for cancer treatment on animals. Rovin said once his company shows the FDA the treatment is ready for testing on people, Phase 1 could take a year to 18 months. Phase 2 may last two years and Phase 3 three to five years. It may be eight years before it can help people.
