Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Immunotherapy to Fight Bone Cancer with Paul Romness and Olivia Egge OS Therapies
Paul Romness, Chairman, CEO, and President of OS Therapies, and Olivia Egge, a member of the Board of Directors of OS Therapies, discuss osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer that primarily affects teenagers. OS Therapies is developing an immunotherapy that utilizes a weakened form of the listeria bacteria to stimulate the immune system and prevent the spread of cancer cells to the lungs and brain. Olivia's experience as a patient has motivated her to advocate for better treatment options and join the board of OS Therapeutics.
Paul explains, "So osteosarcoma is quite literally bone cancer. It happens in teenagers like Olivia, after the growth comes together in the long bones, and there's some sort of miscalculation, and a very aggressive and very deadly cancer develops from that of the growth. And as a result, the cancer can usually spread to the lungs and then the brain. And that's where it gets very, very deadly. And our approach is to stimulate the immune system with a weakened or attenuated listeria that fires up the immune system and goes and finds these little culprits, little micro metastases that have survived the chemo and radiation that these kids go through. It tries to destroy those little micro metastases before they land in the lungs and the brain."
Olivia elaborates, "I talk to patients all the time. Actually, I was introduced to people who became close friends during my actual treatment, but today I still do physical therapy and I'm constantly meeting kids who are in the middle of treatment and some of them have relapse, some haven't, but so I'm constantly meeting new patients and it's just evident that we need better treatment options. I see how weak they are from chemo. They're all, especially with osteosarcoma, you usually have to have a joint replacement or amputation, and chemo just weakens you. So it makes it even harder to recover from that. And I mean, these treatments are just so old. And so for sure, seeing all of these patients going through active treatment just reinforces how badly we need new treatment options, especially treatment options like surgery and immunotherapy."
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