![]() ![]() Wirtz's laboratory contacted Spangler, whose lab specializes in engineering antibodies-proteins in the blood that specifically target other molecules. "Patients with cancer don't die from the primary tumors," says Jaffee, whose research focuses on immune-based therapies for cancer. It would be confined to a certain space, and a surgeon could remove it and you'd go on," says Wirtz, who has joint appointments in the departments of oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "If cancer fatality was only a story of tumor growth, it wouldn't be the disease we talk about and fear so much every day. The lab determined the movement was caused by two molecules secreted by cancer cells and wanted to figure out a way to stop the cells from migrating. Wirtz's interest began in 2016 when a researcher in his lab observed that cancer cells moved much faster when they were close together than when they were spread out. Spangler's and Wirtz's labs together, and Jaffee independently, were investigating metastasis, the spread of cancer from a primary site in the body, which is responsible for 90% of all cancer-related deaths. How can I have the most impact in the shortest amount of time given the resources and training? I really see that as being at that interface between academic science and translational medicine." "This opportunity just presented itself in such an exciting way that we couldn't pass it up," says Spangler. Wirtz formed AbMeta last fall with Jamie Spangler, an assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Elizabeth Jaffee, deputy director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. "Instead of being an advocate for greater entrepreneurship, now I can say even to colleagues with seniority that they should, as a way of measuring their impact, develop tech that is used in the real world and not just rely on journal articles to reach peers about their work." "Now I can honestly say, 'If I can do it, everyone can do it,'" says Wirtz, who is also a professor of engineering science at the Whiting School of Engineering. "They all are incredibly successful business people."īut starting AbMeta Therapeutics also was a way for Wirtz to serve as a real-life example of the high value that Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine place on entrepreneurship. "It's envy of my siblings," he says with a laugh. Denis Wirtz, vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledges there was a personal reason he co-founded a company that aims to stop the spread of cancer in the body.
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