Feature
Discovering Cancer at Its Earliest Stages
December 21, 2006
New company has the “keys” to beating cancer
A leading breast cancer researcher, Linda Malkas is working to create a blood test that would detect the disease at its earliest stages.
What if a simple blood test could help doctors quickly tell whether tumors are benign or cancerous? It could mean earlier, less invasive therapies, fewer treatment-related problems, and, ultimately, more cancer survivors.
This is the vision that propels cs-Keys, Inc., a new Indianapolis-based company co-founded by Linda Malkas, a professor at the IU School of Medicine and the first Vera Bradley chair in oncology. “I’ve been driving full force,” she said, “trying to come up with a true detector to tell whether people have cancer or not.”
And the vision is quickly becoming a reality. Malkas and her research team have already identified a “biomarker” for cancer within human cells. By observing DNA replication, they have discovered that malignant breast cells replicate DNA differently than nonmalignant cells. Nonmalignant cells contain a basic protein called nmPCNA, while malignant cells contain that protein plus its acidic variation, caPCNA. Malkas’s team recently developed an antibody, caPCNAab, which specifically recognizes caPCNA in malignant breast tissue.
The new company plans to develop, manufacture, and distribute cancer-specific blood and tissue tests that can be used in doctors’ offices. The kits will be inexpensive, but the greatest savings will be realized in the detection of cancers that, if caught at more advanced stages, would cost untold millions and shatter countless lives. Though Malkas’s research has focused primarily on breast cancer, she believes her findings can also be applied to other cancers, including those of the esophagus, cervix, and ovaries. If Food and Drug Administration approval goes as planned, the kits could be ready for sale within three years.
Malkas said that this technology will also be useful for monitoring the remission status of cancer patients. “We don’t always know how a particular individual will respond to certain therapies,” she said. “With the antigen testing, we hope to be able to look at a chemotherapy patient’s levels and see if the malignancy is shrinking.” She also hopes to make headway in the “gray areas” of cancer detection, the many cases in which a cancer diagnosis is not clear cut. “Currently, patients are often told to come back in six months when it’s easier to tell if their tumors are malignant or not,” she said. “Six months is a long time to wait for something like that.”
Funded through venture capital investments from BioCrossroads and the Triathlon Medical Group, cs-Keys is housed in the Indiana University Emerging Technologies Center (IUETC) business incubator. Malkas, who says she’s known she wanted to be a scientist since she was nine years old, has found that the venture capital community and the IU technology-transfer environment offer people like her a refreshing change of perspective. Before starting the company, she remembers thinking, “I’m a scientist—what do I know about starting a business?” But with the help of cs-Keys CEO Claire DeSelle and the IUETC, Malkas now sees the possibilities for collaboration between IU scientists and Indiana businesspeople. “If I can do technology transfer, anyone can,” she joked.
Malkas hopes that cs-Keys can serve as a model for other biotech partnerships between academia and businesses in the state. “We have such a wealth of talent here, that if it is harnessed and focused correctly, we can have a huge economic impact on the state of Indiana,” she said. “I’m really proud of Indiana for being so forward-thinking about this.”
