A must read piece on Dr. Jim Olson's quest to find the chemical that could "Paint Tumors":
His laboratory at the renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, located just down the road by Seattle’s Lake Union, has developed a compound that appears to pinpoint all of the malignant cells in a patient’s body. It gives those cells a bright fluorescent sheen, so that surgeons can easily spot them in the operating room. Olson calls the product Tumor Paint, and it comes with a surprising twist: The compound’s main ingredient is a molecule that is found in the stinger of Leiurus quinquestriatus, a potent little animal more popularly known as the deathstalker scorpion.
A scorpion-venom concoction that makes tumors glow sounds almost too outlandish to be true. In fact, Olson explains, that’s what troubled the big grant-making organizations when he came to them for funding. But when those organizations dismissed his ideas as too bizarre, Olson started accepting donations from individuals—particularly the families of current and former patients—quickly raising $5 million for his research. It was a bold and unprecedented tactic: Though patients and their families are often asked to donate to foundations with broad goals, Olson raised money for one specific, untested technology—a much riskier gamble. But thanks to his efforts, Olson’s fluorescent scorpion toxin is now in Phase I clinical trials, an impressive accomplishment for a compound with such a peculiar lineage. The University of Washington students are clearly awed by the work.
This is hardly the first crowd that Olson has dazzled with the story of Tumor Paint. For the past few years, he has been delivering his pitch from coast to coast, often at buzzy general-interest conferences such as PopTech and South by Southwest. These poignant presentations and the attendant media coverage have earned Olson a small measure of fame—enough, for example, so that he was featured in a short documentary that screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. They’ve also earned him additional funding: Olson always ends his talks by urging his audience to visit his crowdfunding platform, Project Violet, where they can make direct donations to his lab.
Both his idea and his approach to funding it make Olson something of a maverick in the field of cancer research. There are critics who worry that the oncologist might be offering more hope than he can deliver—particularly to the desperate loved ones of his patients. But Olson’s mission is to prevent more kids from suffering Hayden Strum’s fate, and to do that, he says, he must rely on families who possess intimate knowledge of what’s at stake. “Without them,” he says, “Tumor Paint wouldn’t exist. Simple as that.”
His laboratory at the renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, located just down the road by Seattle’s Lake Union, has developed a compound that appears to pinpoint all of the malignant cells in a patient’s body. It gives those cells a bright fluorescent sheen, so that surgeons can easily spot them in the operating room. Olson calls the product Tumor Paint, and it comes with a surprising twist: The compound’s main ingredient is a molecule that is found in the stinger of Leiurus quinquestriatus, a potent little animal more popularly known as the deathstalker scorpion.
A scorpion-venom concoction that makes tumors glow sounds almost too outlandish to be true. In fact, Olson explains, that’s what troubled the big grant-making organizations when he came to them for funding. But when those organizations dismissed his ideas as too bizarre, Olson started accepting donations from individuals—particularly the families of current and former patients—quickly raising $5 million for his research. It was a bold and unprecedented tactic: Though patients and their families are often asked to donate to foundations with broad goals, Olson raised money for one specific, untested technology—a much riskier gamble. But thanks to his efforts, Olson’s fluorescent scorpion toxin is now in Phase I clinical trials, an impressive accomplishment for a compound with such a peculiar lineage. The University of Washington students are clearly awed by the work.
This is hardly the first crowd that Olson has dazzled with the story of Tumor Paint. For the past few years, he has been delivering his pitch from coast to coast, often at buzzy general-interest conferences such as PopTech and South by Southwest. These poignant presentations and the attendant media coverage have earned Olson a small measure of fame—enough, for example, so that he was featured in a short documentary that screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. They’ve also earned him additional funding: Olson always ends his talks by urging his audience to visit his crowdfunding platform, Project Violet, where they can make direct donations to his lab.
Both his idea and his approach to funding it make Olson something of a maverick in the field of cancer research. There are critics who worry that the oncologist might be offering more hope than he can deliver—particularly to the desperate loved ones of his patients. But Olson’s mission is to prevent more kids from suffering Hayden Strum’s fate, and to do that, he says, he must rely on families who possess intimate knowledge of what’s at stake. “Without them,” he says, “Tumor Paint wouldn’t exist. Simple as that.”
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