Craik and UCSF Team Take Significant Step Toward Patient-Specific Radiation Therapies

Charles S. Craik, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, is part of a team of UCSF scientists that has developed a way to deliver radiation just to cancerous cells.

While radiation is one of the most effective ways to kill a tumor, the therapies are indiscriminate and can damage healthy tissues. A new therapy, detailed in a recent study in Cancer Research that Craik co-senior-authored, combines a drug to mark the cancer cells for destruction and a radioactive antibody to kill them.

“This is a one-two punch,” Craik said. “We could potentially kill the tumors before they can develop resistance.”

In the study, the new therapy wiped out bladder and lung tumors in mice without causing lethargy or weight loss — the typical side effects of radiation therapy.

“The beauty of this approach is that we can calculate an extremely safe dose of radiation,” Craik said. “Unlike external beam radiation, this method uses only the amount of radiation needed to beat the cancer.”

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