How can an engineering background change the approach to developing new cancer treatments?

The connections between searching for extraterrestrial life and exploring new cancer therapies probably seem few and far between. One involves searching the universe for signs of intelligence beyond our planet, while the other instead revolves around the hunt for sub-microscopic clues that a cell harbours mutations that bring about disease.

But taking the time to find the elements that connect these disparate fields of science can be a revelation for researchers that are working to develop new treatments. Researchers should be exploring lessons that can be learned from more unconventional sources to find solutions that could make a difference in finding treatments that can make a meaningful change for millions of people impacted by disease.

Searching for signals

So, what specifically can be learned from deep space to find solutions for diseases in our own bodies? It all comes back to signals.

My post-graduate career began three decades ago at NASA, specifically at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) after finishing my PhD at Caltech. While many at JPL were managing unmanned rockets exploring outer space, my team was largely focused on trying to find and receive signals that may be coming from extraterrestrial life. The work we were doing was aiming to reach across billions of miles or more, to try and pick up just the faintest traces of signals.

The additional steps in my career journey from working in deep space exploration to researching potential new cancer immunotherapies were bridged by searching for smaller scale signals, such as those between mobile phones and towers and helping improve communication between them.

It was that same signal-based approach that we found can be applied to cancer research. A potential new approach to developing immunotherapies for cancer is built around dialling in to detect, and then respond to, the signals that mutated cells naturally give off, so the body can be trained to fight the disease right at its core.

We know that the body has the underlying tools it needs to often ward off cancer, but cancer is a cunning opponent skilled at evading its enemies. So, for targeted cancers, we can give the body’s immune cells a boost in detecting where the cancer cells are and help them destroy their tumour targets more effectively.

The principles often used at NASA (working with very weak signals coming from a vast array of sometimes-unknown locations in our cosmos, using high-powered equipment and algorithms) can be applied in therapeutic applications; what if we could somehow transform our pursuit of problems at the biggest scale of the universe so that they apply to applications down at the sub-microscopic space in and around cells? As Richard Feynman once observed at Caltech: “There’s plenty of room at the bottom!” It also provides a blueprint for researchers looking for breakthroughs in similar situations to take a completely different mindset to find new and innovative solutions.

Benefits of researching and thinking like an engineer

This all feeds into the mindset of an engineer. Many CSOs and CTOs in pharma start-ups probably wake up each morning feeling like a scientist, but I think that it can also be helpful to think like an engineer. The difference, from my perspective, is that a scientist primarily will look at a phenomenon and wonder what’s going on and try to understand it, while an engineer primarily will look at it and wonder how that same phenomenon can be used to achieve an outcome. I love science and the pursuit of knowledge, but feel that my focus at the end of the day should be on making something useful that makes a meaningful difference.

This isn’t to say that the industry doesn’t need basic research and traditional academic contributors, it certainly does, but there’s also a significant opportunity for the unconventional. The path taken may not look like the usual one on paper, but it’s one that can lead to real-world results, and I think any industry can use more of that type of thinking.

Sometimes all it takes to make a breakthrough in research, in any field, is to look at the problem differently than anybody has before. Naturally, that’s easier said than done, but some of the industry’s most prominent breakthroughs often come from out-of-the-box thinking or from those willing to see things from a different perspective.

About the author

Dr Mike Flanagan is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Delve Therapeutics, an early-stage biotech star-tup researching engineered cell therapies to treat certain forms of cancer. Based at the New Jersey Bioscience Center, a leading incubator in the region dedicated to life sciences and biotechnology companies, Dr Flanagan leverages his background in deep space exploration and telecommunications to track down cancer’s signals.