Saurabh Saha

Saurabh Saha
Residence United States
Nationality American
Education BSc, MSc, MD, and PhD
Alma mater California Institute of Technology
Johns Hopkins University
Harvard University
University of Oxford
Occupation Cancer drug discovery
Known for Translational medicine
Cancer biosurgery

Saurabh Saha is an American physician, scientist, and cancer researcher.

Education

Saha received his undergraduate degree in biology from the California Institute of Technology.[1] He also attended both Harvard Business School and Oxford University.[2] Saha trained under Bert Vogelstein during his studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,[3] where he received both an MD and a PhD in cancer genetics.[4]

Career

After leaving academia, Saha joined the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in their Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products Practice in New York City.[5] In 2005, he became the Director of the New Indications Discovery Unit at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[4] Between 2008 and 2015, Saha served as the President of BioMed Valley Discoveries, a biomedical research and development company focused on cancer drug discovery,[6] and the Chief Scientific Officer of two of the company's spin-offs.[2] He has published in periodicals including the Nature and Science journals, where he has reported translational research and development discoveries in cancer research.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] In all he has been cited more than 3,000 times by other scholars.[2] He is also on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Clinical Oncology,[14] Journal of Translational Medicine,[15] and Cancer Biology & Therapy.[16]

Clostridium novyi-NT treatment of cancer

In 2014, Saha and his team published evidence that injecting a weakened strain of Clostridium novyi bacteria into a cancer tumor caused shrinkage or disappearance of the injected cancer lesion, a type of cancer biosurgery whereby living organisms are used to microscopically destroy tumor cells while sparing normal tissue.[17] Initial tests were done on canines with naturally occurring cancers and one human cancer patient. The anaerobic bacteria survived in environments of low oxygen and destroyed the tumor from the inside-out while triggering an inflammatory/immune response at the site of the tumor destruction.[18] During the study, of the sixteen dogs with soft-tissue sarcoma treated with the C. novyi-NT therapeutic, three dogs saw their tumors disappear for up to two years, and another three saw their growths shrink by 30%. When the bacteria reached the edge of the tumor, they stopped killing cells around them due to the oxygen present in the environment of normal body tissue.[3][11] In the first human patient, a 53-year-old woman experienced near complete tumor destruction of her myosarcoma within the timespan of a few days.[19][20] Following this, a clinical trial in humans was begun in order to further explore the therapy in patients with no options for curative therapy for their solid malignant tumors.[21]

References

  1. ↑ "Commencement" (PDF). Retrieved September 19, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 "Saurabh Saha". Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  3. 1 2 Alice Park (August 13, 2014). "Treating Cancer With Bacteria Shows Real Promise". Time Magazine. Retrieved September 15, 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Saurabh Saha". Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Biomed Valley Discoveries". Retrieved September 19, 2014.
  6. ↑ Mitch Leslie (August 13, 2014). "Bacteria shrink tumors in humans, dogs". Science Magazine. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  7. ↑ Saha S, Sparks AB, Rago C, Akmaev V, Wang CJ, Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE (May 2002). "Using the transcriptome to annotate the genome". Nature Biotechnology.
  8. ↑ Christoph Lengauer, Luis A. Diaz, Jr, and Saurabh Saha (May 2005). "Outlook: Cancer drug discovery through collaboration". Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  9. ↑ Saurabh Saha; et al. (October 11, 2001). "A Phosphatase Associated with Metastasis of Colorectal Cancer". Science. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Mutational Analysis of the Tyrosine Kinome in Colorectal Cancers". Science. May 2003.
  11. 1 2 "Intratumoral injection of Clostridium novyi-NT spores induces antitumor responses". Science Translational Medicine. Aug 2014.
  12. ↑ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/300/5621/949.short
  13. ↑ http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/6/249/249ra111
  14. ↑ "Editorial board". Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Editorial board". Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Editorial board". Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Study Injecting Bacteria into Tumors may help reduce size". Fox. August 13, 2014. Retrieved September 19, 2014.
  18. ↑ "Bacteria Battle Cancer Cells to Shrink Human Tumors". New Scientist. Retrieved September 19, 2014.
  19. ↑ Brianne Pfannenstiel (August 25, 2014). "Stowers CEO: Cancer breakthrough validates founders' legacy". Kansas City Business Journal. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  20. ↑ Melissa Healy. "A bacterium that destroys tumors' dark heart shows promise". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  21. ↑ Melissa Healy (August 20, 2014). "Bacterium Destroys Tumors' Dark Heart". Sci-Today. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
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