Aug 23, 2024
David Mazzo, President and CEO of Lisata Therapeutics, has a lead program focused on metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The Lisata CendR Platform and drug certepetide efficiently augment the effects of chemotherapy and immunotherapies in the tumor microenvironment. Based on early findings, the future of cancer treatment may involve combining existing therapies with certepetide to personalize treatment for most solid tumors.
David explains, "At Lisata, we're developing therapies to combat a challenging problem in the medical field today, which is the effective treatment of solid tumors. Solid tumors are very difficult to treat for two very simple reasons. On the one hand, these tumors generate a layer of cells around them that acts as a physical barrier. It's called the tumor stroma, and it prevents the penetration of many anti-cancer medicines into the tumor, which is why you often don't get the kind of results that one would expect."
"The other obstacle these tumors present is that they generate or express a tumor microenvironment that is immunosuppressive, which helps the tumor hide from your innate immune system. It helps it not respond very well to externally administered immunotherapies. When you combine these two challenges, you end up with a set of diseases that remains an enigma in medical science today."
"So our therapy at Lisata called certepetide, our lead product, actually combines the ability to target and penetrate tumors more effectively for co-administered anti-cancer drugs with the ability to modify the tumor microenvironment, making it more immunoreceptive and therefore more likely to respond to your immune system and immunotherapies."
#Lisata #Oncology #Cancer #SolidTumors #Immunotherapies #TumorMicroEnvironment
