Computer-Designing
Cancer Treatment

Dr. Jack Tuszynski is using computational biophysics to design drugs that will combat cancerous cells but minimally impact healthy ones. 


As the Allard Research Chair in Oncology, Tuszynski heads a team at work building “designer drugs” able to kill tumours and eventually lead to cancer cures.

“My hope is that the tangible effects are not that far away,” says Tuszynski, also a physics professor at the University of Alberta. “Once we have all the proper equipment in place, our work could save years of research time, millions of dollars and would take the guesswork out of finding the proper drugs to treat cancer.”

Simply put, the goal of Tuszynski’s computational biophysics work is to create the perfect drugs that would target cancerous cells while reducing side-effects to the healthy cells. For example, he and researchers from Texas have already developed a new generation of chemotherapy drugs called Taxol, a class that interacts with certain proteins in cells to stop cell division and eventually the spread of cancer. Taxol drugs currently stop cell division in both healthy and cancerous cells; the new class of these drugs being designed by Tuszynski and his colleagues will mainly affect cancerous cells.

During his first sabbatical in Europe Tuszynski toured a number of labs and had time to reflect on his career. It was then he decided to focus his expertise in biological physics on fighting such diseases as cancer. To achieve success in this new but promising field of biological modelling, Tuszynski drew on his physics background to help create a computer software program that scans all proteins against all available chemical compounds to find the perfect match. Ten years later, the intricate program he worked on can tell scientists exactly how well the protein might bind to the drug.

“This is based on the principle of fitting like a lock and key,” says Tuszynski. “Once you find that match, you can move on to determining the actual dosage, formulation or best way to administer it. But before that point, you need what we call rational drug design. Otherwise the way of trying to figure out the best drugs would be called irrational, serendipity or an educated guess.”

Tuszynski hopes that within two years his research group will be able to boast that it is the only one in the world capable of running the complete cycle—starting at the computational
model through to clinical trials. “That’s my dream and if we do that, we could achieve the end goal of killing tumours in a patient-specific manner; this is not the case today.”

Collaborating with top researchers at the Cross Cancer Institute and in Texas and China will help speed that goal along, but the lack of needed equipment closer to home is slowing the team down. Currently, they have access to 100 processors, most scattered at individual workstations. To be able to calculate millions of possible targets against millions of possible drug compounds, at least 1,000 processors are needed. “When you think about the cost and years, likely decades, we could save in the long run the cost is worth it,” he says. “I work in a building where I walk past people every day who are very sick and it is impossible not to be affected by that. To think that we could be so close to changing people’s lives in such a positive way is very exciting.”

Dr. Jack Tuszynski was appointed Allard Research Chair in Oncology in October 2005. The Allard Research Chair is supported by an initial $2 million donation from the Allard Foundation to the Alberta Cancer Foundation. The $3 million Chair is supported by the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s Research Endowment Fund.