By Kristy Volmert | Staff Writer
From Baylor’s Synthesis and Drug-Lead Discovery Lab to the Texas Medical Center, Schotts Professor of Chemistry Dr. Daniel Romo is accelerating the future of oncology.
Romo is one of 24 individuals partaking in the fifth cohort of the Texas Medical Center Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics program. Funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, 2025 ACT researchers will specifically focus on the innovation of therapeutic treatment for pancreatic cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer, with an average five-year survival rate of only 13%. It’s also the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Romo will collaborate with Dr. Susan Bates, director of Translational Cancer Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. Bates works as an oncologist and has treated various types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer.
Romo said their goal is to innovate more effective therapeutic treatments that will increase the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients. According to Romo, this is because even when a patient goes into remission, there is still a chance that the cancer will come back and it can be very unpredictable from person to person.
“The idea is to try to extend the lives of patients that are dealing with these types of cancer,” Romo said.
He said that of all types of cancer, pancreatic cancer is especially lacking in effective therapeutic treatments, and he is excited to have the opportunity to help change that.
“We’re trying to push this as far as we can get to help people and make an impact,” Romo said.
Dr. Ken Hull, co-director of the Synthesis and Drug-Lead Discovery Lab, works alongside Romo and said he loves working in the laboratory and lending his expertise in medicinal chemistry to these research areas.
“Pancreatic cancer has an unmet medical need, which means there aren’t really good therapeutics to treat it that really extend the person’s life for a long period of time,” Hull said.
He said that overall he is passionate about working on “something that one day may influence another person’s life in a positive way.”
Romo said it’s amazing how he is able to investigate God’s creation and use his knowledge to “heal the nations.”
“It’s kind of cool to think that our immune system is actually geared to ward off cancer, but the cancer gets around it,” he said. “What we are working on in our research is finding ways to re-train the immune system to recognize cancer.”
For the next nine months, Romo and Bates will work on launching a company that develops cancer therapeutics. The ACT Program through the Texas Medical Center will support and fund them with their projects, and Romo will use resources at Baylor such as the discovery lab and the BRIC to investigate molecular combinations that will effectively work against cancer cells.
“Our scientists and researchers are really on the right track, and it’s a blessing to be a part of that,” Romo said.
