Chemistry junior Blake Kruger is developing a new treatment for Kaposi sarcoma, a type of cancer which disproportionately affects black people, the homeless and gay males, three groups that commonly lack affordable access to healthcare.
Kaposi sarcoma is a soft tissue cancer in which tumors most commonly develop on the body or inside the mouth, according to the American Cancer Society. The most common form of Kaposi sarcoma is linked to HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.
Kruger said Kaposi sarcoma is angiogenic, meaning it rapidly multiplies blood vessels through the use of proteins. In addition to multiplying blood cells, the proteins also mask the cancer from the body’s immune system and support the cancer’s metastasis, he said.
His proposed treatment would target the two proteins, ceasing the proteins’ angiogenic metastasis and immunologic cloaking abilities or delaying them long enough to allow the patient’s body to react to the cancer, Kruger said.
Kruger’s interest in Kaposi sarcoma developed just after his freshman year of college. In the summer of 2014, Kruger interned in the lab of Christopher Parsons, a doctor with LSU Health Sciences who specializes in HIV associated cancers and malignancies related to Kaposi sarcoma.
Kruger’s time in the clinic played a big role in influencing his research.
“When I was in the clinics with Dr. Parsons, I got a chance to really see the people who were affected by Kaposi sarcoma,” he said. “These people who this illness is affecting fall in between the cracks when it comes to our healthcare system, particularly in Louisiana.”
Black people constitute 69 percent of new HIV cases and 78 percent of new AIDS cases, despite constituting only 32 percent of the state population. Sixty-two percent of the state’s new HIV cases among black people in 2015 were homosexual men, according to HIV 411, a Louisiana STD and HIV awareness program.
Kruger’s proposed treatment method would make it possible to more successfully and economically treat the three marginalized groups most affected by this disease, he said.
His method proposes using a photo-therapeutic injection that would use a light source and metal nanoparticles to release the drug into a localized region. Essentially, the drug is attached to nanoparticles of certain metals and the nanoparticles are engineered to be attracted to the diseased cancer cells.
When the nanoparticles carrying the drug reach the diseased cell, a beam of light is shot at the site of the injection and the energy from the light breaks the bonds between the nanoparticles and the drug, Kruger said.
The treatment will be more economical, making it more accessible to Kaposi sarcoma patients, he said. The treatment requires little medical expertise to execute and patients will incur fewer costs than if they received a treatment that required the presence of a doctor or specialist.
Finding a way to benefit people, especially Louisiana citizens, was a main drive behind Kruger’s research.
“The reason I do work and the reason I want to become a physician in the future is for the patients themselves,” Kruger said. “I think a really fundamental part of research is knowing what groups you’re helping.”
Chemistry assistant professor Louis Haber, Kruger’s thesis adviser, said Kruger’s work is helping push the boundaries of nanomedicine and can have widespread applications for a number of diseases’ treatments.
“It’s really nice when the science that you’re doing can have real world impacts for improving people’s lives, possibly curing diseases and making people’s lives better,” Haber said.