Empowered Patient Podcast

Robert Schickel, Chief Executive Officer at NUAgo Therapeutics, is developing a cancer therapy using short RNAs to target and disrupt interconnected survival genes in cancer cells. The therapy has been shown to be non-toxic to healthy cells, which have high levels of microRNAs, whereas cancer cells downregulate microRNAs to become metastatic. This is a systems-biology therapeutic approach that targets the entire survival network of a cell, making it independent of specific mutations or pathways and potentially applicable to the vast majority of solid tumors. Robert explains, "NUAgo is a technology company. We are developing what we define as short RNAs, and these are going to be cancer therapies that really target the survival system of a cancer. This survival system keeps the cancer alive. And instead of going after single components, pathways, or mutations as targeted therapies do, we're using short RNAs to reduce the expression of multiple essential survival genes. And when you get enough of these genes di