RALEIGH, NC. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — More than 700,000 Americans are living with a brain tumor and treating them is one of medicine’s biggest challenges. Every tumor is different, and doctors often don’t know which drug will work best. Now, a brain cancer survivor is working to change that, not just for himself, but for every patient who comes next.
This lab is exactly where Andrew Satterlee, PhD, is supposed to be.
“My cancer shaped my whole life. It shaped my whole career direction. It shaped how I think about life and the important things in life,” Andrew told Ivanhoe.
When Andrew was a 20-year-old engineering student, his world was turned upside down.
“I’m a brain cancer survivor. When I was 20 years old, I got hydrocephalus,” he said.
Doctors removed a mass the size of a ping pong ball, but after surgery, he faced a frightening reality.
“The doctors didn’t know what drugs to give me. They didn’t agree on what drugs to give me,” Andrew recalled.
Andrew and his family made the best decision they could, but never knew if it was the right one. Now, that experience is driving his life’s work as an assistant professor and director of the Screening Live Cancer Explants (SLiCE) program at Eshelman Innovation at UNC.
“Now 18 years later, I’m here in a lab that gets to work on this tool that I could have used as a patient,” Andrew told Ivanhoe.
Now he is helping develop the “Brain SLiCE” platform. Instead of guessing which drug might work, scientists can test medicines directly on a patient’s living tumor by placing a tumor sample onto living tissue outside the body and exposing it to different therapies.
“It can respond in ways that it doesn’t respond when you try to grow it up in a plastic dish,” Andrew explained.
Allowing doctors to see what works and what doesn’t.
“In just four days, we can know if the tumor lived or died during treatment,” Andrew said.
The goal?
“It’s meant to be personalized to every specific patient and their own tumor,” Andrew told Ivanhoe.
For him, this breakthrough isn’t just science. It’s personal.
Researchers say technology is still in development and must clear regulatory hurdles before it can guide everyday patient care. But they say brain cancer is just the beginning. The same approach could one day help doctors test treatments for other cancers, including tumors in the lungs and abdomen.
Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Matt Goldschmidt, Videographer; & Chuck Bennethum, Editor.
Source:
https://braintumor.org/brain-tumors/about-brain-tumors/
* For More Information, Contact: Andrew Satterlee, PhD
Assistant Professor and Director of the Screening Live Cancer Explants (SLiCE) Program at Eshelman Innovation at UNC.
and
Nancy Bostrom
Manager of Research & National News at UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine
nancy.bostrom@unchealth.unc.edu
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