Cancer is a major target for medical professionals of all stripes, and Dr. Robert Baiocchi has his sights set on viruses that may lead to it.
Baiocchi, an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine for 19 years, has been working to develop a vaccine against a virus associated with cancers such as lymphoma and hopes to see it approved.
His scientific interest developed in graduate school, where he was able to learn directly from Dr. Michael Caligiuri, director of OSU’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and CEO of the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. Most of Baiocchi’s work was done in the laboratory using animal models with lymphoma, and that eventually sparked his interest.
“I really started getting excited about medicine when I saw some of the therapies that we were working on in mice move into humans.” Dr. Robert Baiocchi
Baiocchi used the hormone interleukin-2 in HIV patients, allowing him to document how it was changing their immune responses to viruses and other infections. He also had experience in a bone marrow transplant clinic, which allowed him to see how patients responded when they developed cancers in the post-transplant setting.
Baiocchi says he was able to document one of the first reports of a spontaneous immune response in a bone marrow transplant patient with lymphoma.
“To see that immunity bounce back and totally clear cancer was just fascinating for me, and it made me really want to go into medicine,” he says.
Baiocchi describes his work in the lab as being “translational,” knowing that at some point, the research being performed could impact patients. The three main areas of focus within the laboratory program are experimental therapeutics for lymphomas, mechanisms of Epstein-Barr virus-driven B cell transformation and clinical research focusing on new methods to treat immune deficient patients who develop cancer.
OSU announced a license agreement last year between the Ohio State Technology Commercialization Office – which is dedicated to supporting academic and clinical researchers and inventors by advancing their discoveries and innovations to market – and a startup therapeutics company to develop new drugs inhibiting a specific enzyme known as PRMT5 as potential treatments, as well as address other unmet medical needs, such as benign blood disease and autoimmune disease. Baiocchi was among a group of scientists named last year to work in collaboration with the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Drug Developmental Institute (DDI) to advance the PRMT5 therapeutic program toward pre-clinical drug development.
PRMT5 alters the structure of chromatin to suppress the transcription of genes and the production of proteins. Baiocchi says his group’s experimental treatment is likely a year away from being a clinical candidate for several diseases, noting that drug development efforts first began in 2010.
“From the time of inception of the idea to actually having a pharmaceutical company close to a clinical drug, it’s been very rapid.” Dr. Robert Baiocchi
He’s hopeful the products will prevent cancers in high-risk individuals, as well as treat aggressive diseases such as lymphomas. The effort is a collaboration among multiple departments that deal with different types of cancers, in addition to chemists and representatives of the pharmaceutical company as well.
“Collectively, we’re talking about dozens of people who are working on this,” Baiocchi says.
DDI is also supporting the research team to develop a vaccine against the Epstein-Barr virus, a member of the herpes family. It affects 90 to 95 percent of adults and is associated with the development of several cancers, including lymphomas, in patients receiving organ or bone marrow transplants. The vaccine could be used to improve the body’s immune response to the virus, thus helping to prevent cancer.
Helping others develop their own pathways has been an important aspect of Baiocchi’s career, he says.
“I think when you’re looking at the impact and long-term outcomes, it’d be wonderful if (the) therapies we developed worked and helped patients,” he says. “But … knowing that your efforts and training of future scientists and physician-scientists to make their discoveries down the road is (also) an incredibly gratifying aspect of this job.”
Baiocchi anticipates the vaccine being in phase 1 trials testing toxicity, safety and activity in healthy volunteers in the next 12 to 18 months. He also predicts that the PRMT5 drug will move along quickly.
“There are other companies pursuing this, but we believe we have a unique angle and currently have very exciting drugs that we are close to moving forward in pre-clinical models of lymphoma,” he says. “Once that’s through, we’ll probably be a year out from moving to the FDA for clinical trials.”
Matthew Kent is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
About the Expert
Dr. Robert Baiocchi is an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He earned his medical degree from OSU and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine through ABIM Research Pathway, his fellowship in medical oncology at the OSU College of Medicine and his post-doctorate fellowship in hematology and oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute Department of Medicine in Buffalo, N.Y.
