Brian Frenzel is an experienced life science entrepreneur and private investor based in Los Altos, California. He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an undergraduate degree from the same institution. Brian Frenzel is the CEO of Tosk, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that focuses on developing new drugs for cancer and other diseases.
Recent research using fruit flies has begun to unravel new insights into potential cancer treatments. Although these insects have been used as an important biology research tool for over a century. their role in drug discovery is a recent development. For example, fruit flies can help researchers to study what exactly causes death in cancer patients. Researchers implant human non-metastatic tumors, which are tumors that do not spread to other parts of the body, into fruit flies and monitor their systemic effects. They look for the activities of the tumor that cause the animals to die quickly. Fruit flies are effective for research because scientists can monitor them up to the moment of death. And they are much less expensive than using other more traditional cancer models in rodents. Understanding the mechanism of action of the tumor genes helps researchers to find new therapies to block the activity of the cancer genes. At Tosk, scientists have discovered and perfected ways to integrate human cancer genes into the genome of flies in such a way that candidate compounds can be screened for their ability to block the activity of these genes. Such screens have the advantage of identifying compounds which are also safe, since toxic compounds would kill the flies. The hits in these screens are now being optimized for their potential as direct treatments for the cancers that are driven by the target genes.
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AuthorAt Genelabs Technologies in the 1980’s, Brian Frenzel served on the front lines in the war on HIV/AIDS and championed projects to identify and diagnose new hepatitis viruses. Archives
June 2020
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