Discovery could be cancer cure

By Tim Botos

Canton Repository

CLEVELAND

The closest Michael Kalafatis ever will get to being a rock star is a photo posted near his office door at Cleveland State University.

In the photo, a musician, strutting across a stage, soaks in the applause and adulation of thousands of fans. On it, a caption reads: “The biochemical superstar, Dr. Kalafatis, is shown here leaving a recent Cleveland State lecture.”

“Some of my students did that. ... Funny, huh?” he said.

By most accounts, Kalafatis is a good professor. He teaches chemistry and biochemistry courses. He co-founded the nation’s only program to help returning military veterans transition back into college life. He has published articles in science journals and landed more than $1.5 million in research grants for his work in blood coagulation studies.

Pretty boring stuff, he said.

“Your basic geek. I’m a nerd,” he said.

By the way, he also discovered a possible cure for cancer.

At this point, it’s best described as a breakthrough. Only time will tell if it is an effective treatment for a disease diagnosed in 1.5 million people every year in the U.S., a disease that kills a half-million every year.

And it happened by accident. Right there inside chemistry labs in a science building along Euclid Avenue. A dozen or so blocks from the Indians’ Progressive Field or Cleveland Browns Stadium. Kalafatis calls it a case of serendipity, rather than a “stumbled-on.”

“Your best discoveries are from something you weren’t expecting,” said David Anderson, associate dean in the College of Science.

History is full of such serendipity. John Pemberton and the formula for Coca-Cola. Roy Plunkett and Teflon. Charles Goodyear and vulcanized rubber. American engineer Wilson Greatbatch, who was trying to record heart sounds, but wound up inventing the pacemaker. And, of course, the 1928 discovery of the antibiotic penicillin — all because Alexander Fleming left an untidy work area and fungus grew on some cultures.

Kalafatis is a 52-year-old married father of three. His immediate family has never been touched by cancer. But during the last year, as his work has progressed, he’s been deluged with e-mails and calls from well-wishers who have learned of his work. And from families seeking hope to situations that too often become hopeless.

“These ... are really motivating,” said Kalafatis, who regularly chugs Red Bull for energy during late nights in the labs that often carry over into the wee hours. “Nobody is excited about all this more than I am.”

All this started more than three years ago. He was working on a side research project that dated back years earlier. Along the way, some of his students placed a compound Kalafatis now calls CancerX on human cancer cells in a petri dish.

Oddly, it killed the cells. It wasn’t the outcome he had expected. So, they tried again. Same result. Then again. These were good students, but surely they’d messed up the experiment, he thought.

So, he did it himself.

The cancer cells died.

Leukemia, breast, skin, renal, brain and prostate cancer cells — they all died.

Curious indeed, but hardly a magic potion.

“Killing cancer cells in a dish happens frequently,” said Dr. Daniel Lindner of the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute and Lerner Research Institute. “Think about it. You can pour gasoline on the cells and they’d die.”

What’s happened since, though, has been promising.

Lindner worked with Kalafatis as experiments proceeded to mice. In a Cleveland Clinic lab, human cancer cells were inserted into mice and allowed to grow into tumors. Kalafatis’ CancerX drug then was injected into the tumors. Doses of the drug eradicated and reduced seven different types of cancer. All told, the drug has worked on nearly 60 types of cancer, either in a petri dish or in mice. Recently, the drug substantially reduced brain tumors created from gioblastoma cells — the kind of cancer that killed Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Most importantly, the drug didn’t harm surrounding healthy cells.

“How’s it going to work in humans? I don’t know,” Kalafatis said.

He’s currently preparing grant applications to fund more research.