Wafik S. El-Deiry, Director of Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University and Chair of the WIN Consortium in Cancer Personalized Medicine, shared on LinkedIn:
”This morning I was inspired by this video by Caitlin Boyle but also sad to learn she passed away in 2021.
I was aware of Caitlin’s story back in 2018 in the Philadelphia Inquirer as a patient with an aggressive middle of the brain tumor who experienced benefit from ONC201 on an FDA Expanded Access Program long before the drug was approved in 2025 as dordaviprone. ONC201/TIC10 was discovered in my academic lab and licensed to a company I founded years ago called Oncoceutics.
What inspires me is the knowledge that fundamental research on cancer in my lab that decades ago connected the major tumor suppressor p53 to the host innate TRAIL-DR5 immune system was ultimately translated. The research led us to discover molecules that boost that innate immune system independently of p53 since p53 is very commonly mutated in human cancer. Although the patient experienced benefit, she was not cured and sadly passed away a few years later.
This is a reminder that we must do much better to improve patient survival but also that support of biomedical research is crucial for advances that ultimately help patients.”
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