What if you could target cancer tumors without using radiation or chemotherapy and instead generate heat from inside the tumor to kill cells? That’s the quest of our Raise the Line from Elsevier guest, Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green, whose promising research using lasers and nanoparticles to eliminate tumors received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA earlier this year. Tune-in to hear about the tragic motivation for her work, the challenges of raising the millions of dollars needed for human clinical trials, and rethinking the current funding landscape for cancer treatments.
Limiting the side effects of cancer treatments has been an animating force in the field of oncology for many years, and there’s been progress to report on that front, but what if you could target cancer tumors without using radiation or chemotherapy and instead generate heat from inside the tumor to kill cells?
That’s the quest of our guest today, Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green, whose promising research using lasers and nanoparticles to eliminate tumors received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA earlier this year. “The laser beam that we're using is low power like a laser pointer, and without activation by the laser, the nanoparticles are harmless. Both are targeted just at the site of the tumor so because we don’t use systemic delivery, we avoid all of the systemic side effects,” she explains.
Dr. Green is also the founder and president of the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, named for an aunt who raised her and who died of cancer without pursuing curative treatment because of her fear of the side effects. Shortly after, her aunt’s husband also died of cancer, opting for treatments that took a heavy toll on his body. “At 22 years old, I saw the horrors of cancer and the horrors of cancer treatment and just felt in my heart that there has to be something better than this,” she tells host Michael Carrese.
On this fascinating episode of Raise the Line from Elsevier, we'll explore the science behind Dr. Green's approach, the challenges of raising the millions of dollars needed for human clinical trials, and rethinking the current funding landscape for cancer treatments.
Mentioned in this episode:
Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation
Michael Carrese
Hi, I'm Michael Carrese, welcoming you to Raise the Line from Elsevier, an ongoing exploration about how to improve health and healthcare.
Developing targeted treatments for cancer with a goal of sparing patients from side effects has been an animating force in the field of oncology for many years, and there has been considerable progress to report on that front. But what if you could target cancer tumors without using radiation or chemotherapy and instead generate heat from inside the tumor to kill cells?
That's the quest of our guest today, Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green, a medical physicist whose promising research using nanoparticle therapy received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA in February, a recognition reserved for technologies that show potential for providing a substantial improvement over existing treatments.
Dr. Green is also the founder and president of the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to fund the human clinical trials needed to bring this therapy to patients on an equitable basis.
Today we'll explore the science behind her approach, the long road from promising lab results to clinical application, and what it will take to make breakthrough cancer therapies available to everyone who needs them.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Green.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Thank you so much for having me, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here.
Michael
So we always like to start with learning more about our guests and what first got them interested in healthcare. So in your case, you got interested in physics and then applying it to medicine. How did all that unfold for you?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So, when I was a little girl, I never had a science kit or any interest in studying anything related to medicine. But I had a brother who was five years older than I am who made learning fascinating and fun. He would celebrate when I would get a math problem right or spell a word correctly. He would celebrate like I scored a touchdown. And so he instilled an early fascination and love of knowledge, and it gave me an insatiable appetite to learn new things.
I always was very good at problem solving and puzzles, and my aunt would have me sit for hours and untangle all her tangled necklaces in her jewelry box, and I'm like, “How do these keep getting tangled?” It would keep me busy for her, but for me, I don't know if that's like an OCD personality, I couldn't put it down until I sorted and untangled all the necklaces. So that gave me an early foundation in being really detail oriented and problem solving.
So I remember when my brother was in fourth grade, I was in kindergarten, he would have me do all of his homework. Then he ended up repeating fourth grade because he couldn't pass the grade and I ended up being the first in my family to go to college. I attended Alabama A&M University on a full academic scholarship, and my first internship was at NASA, calibrating lasers for the International Space Station.
Michael
Wow.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
My second two summers I spent working on photonic crystal fibers, creating the groundwork for what then became used for high speed cable and internet. Let me backtrack just a little bit. In between the summer of my high school senior year and my college freshman year, I did a program at Xavier University for pre-college students interested in computer science to help us transition. This was way back in the nineteen hundreds, in nineteen ninety-nine.
Michael
Yeah, it does sort of start making you sound old when you refer to the last century, right? I have that problem myself.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And so the summer program was called SOAR 3, and it was at Xavier University. I thought I wanted to major in computer science, and I said, you know, I don't like sitting in front of computers all day, I've got to find something else. So I actually started my freshman year at Alabama A&M University, and I changed my major three or four times the first semester, but I was on the STEM track because of the computer science initial interest.
This lady who was working on her PhD in physics at the time saw me coming out of a calculus class, her name is Aisha Fields, and she challenged me and asked me, who are you? I haven't seen you before. You must be really smart taking calculus as a freshman. I said, oh no, I don't know that I'm smart. I have really good study habits, I can sit down and focus for a long time, and that's what's given me the foundation.
She's like, what are you going to do? I said I'm not sure, I've changed my major a few times already. I would like to do something to help people, but you know, I'm not sure. And she said, well, let me tell you, if you major in physics, you can then go later into any other area.
Michael
Hm. Good point.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And I said, hmm, okay, this could be something interesting because I am undecided. But then I thought, you know, everybody knows physics is hard, so you must be crazy. So she said, who told you physics is hard? Those people weren't taking calculus as a freshman. I bet you it won't be hard for you, and don't let other people's limitations define your reality.
Maybe it's hard for them, but it doesn't mean that it will be hard for you.
So I accepted her challenge and went on to have a 4.0 GPA as a physics major. She ended up being the fiftieth African American woman to earn a PhD in physics, and that one conversation eventually led to me becoming the seventy-sixth African American woman to earn a PhD in physics in the United States.
Michael
What a wonderful story.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And so Dr. Aisha Fields is the reason why I majored in physics.
Michael
Well, I tell you, we hear all the time from folks about the importance of mentorship, and they often, if they're further along in their careers, really want to be mentors themselves because it has been so important.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Yes. Yes. And having someone push me outside of my comfort zone to expand my thoughts about what I thought was possible...it was such a beautiful lesson in being audacious and being courageous academically.
Michael
Right. So how did physics get you to cancer research? Because there were lots of different ways to go, as you just said.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Right. And so after interning at NASA, calibrating lasers for the International Space Station, and interning at University of Rochester, where I was developing the bending photonic crystal fibers -- and I actually had some lab experience at Alabama A&M University during the semesters working with Bragg fibers, fiber optics -- I was planning a career in making cable and internet faster. That was my whole focus.
In the summer, the day after I graduated, everything changed. My aunt announced that she had what she referred to as woman's cancer, and she said that she would rather die than experience the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. I was her primary caregiver the last three months of her life, and I watched the matriarch of our family, the cooker of Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner, the glue that held our family together, deteriorate to the point where she couldn't walk, to the point where she couldn't talk, when all she could do was moan and grunt.
Biologically she was my aunt, but she became my mother, essentially. My biological mother passed when I was eighteen months old, and my grandparents took my two brothers and I in when I was four. In that same year, they both passed.
Michael
My goodness.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So that's how my aunt became my legal guardian and the only mom I really grew up with.
She and her husband raised me from age four. So cancer came to our family's doorstep and took basically the only mom I knew. And being her primary caregiver, it was heart wrenching. To make matters even more heartbreaking, my uncle who raised me was diagnosed with cancer three months after my aunt passed.
He opted in for chemotherapy and radiation even when the doctors gave him four to six months to live. I was his primary caregiver while he lost 150 pounds, all of his hair, all of his eyelashes, all of his eyebrows, his fingernails turned black, his skin looked like it had been barbecued. He had uncontrollable diarrhea for months.
Michael
Poor man.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
I took time off school to nurse him, love him back to life, pray for him, encourage him. And the doctor said it was a miracle because he was not, quote unquote, supposed to make it, even with chemo and radiation. And I know a lot of scientists don't believe in God -- and I don't always talk about that in my interviews -- but I do believe my petitions to God to not take the last parental figure I had -- and I was only twenty-two years old -- to spare him, let me grow older. Losing auntie was a lot.
And so for me, at twenty-two years old, I saw the horrors of cancer and the horrors of the standard of care cancer treatment and it just felt in my heart that there has to be something better than this. Has to be. Then I started thinking, if satellites in outer space can tell whether a dime on the ground is face up or face down, and cell phones can call anywhere on the planet and target one phone -- even in a stadium full of people, even if it's on the other side of the world -- surely, surely we should be able to treat cancer at the site of the tumor.
Coming with my physics background, and not as a biologist, not as a chemist, I thought that perhaps I didn't understand why we aren't using lasers. So I started doing a deep dive and researching and figuring out who has claimed to cure cancer and what was the destiny of those claims. And if you didn't have an FDA approval and a clinical trial, whether it worked or not, it didn't matter, it would never be offered in the hospitals.
I remember going to a conference as a student and one of the presenters said if the cure to cancer was in cinnamon, we wouldn't endorse it because we couldn't make any money off of it. We need to be able to bill it through the insurance companies, and it's a business. So I had what I call a divine download to use the lasers and to target cancer just at the site of the tumor, I sketched out everything, and then I applied to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
I sought out the expert in lasers at a school where they also had a cancer center, and said, let me just get there and I'll figure it out. So I started graduate school and my PhD advisor, Dr. Sergey Mirov, who is a world renowned laser expert -- said, usually my graduate students work on my projects, but since you have your own funding and you have this big idea, big risk, big reward, I'll let you sink or swim. So if you can figure it out, you have the funding, you have my blessings, go figure it out.
He gave me free rein to develop my own PhD dissertation. I built a committee with physicists and members of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. I trained for five years at the Comprehensive Cancer Center, developing the technology, and a year in the Department of Pathology.
I may be skipping ahead, but that was the transition from physics into cancer research, because it became almost a personal vendetta, almost my therapy, to say -- with respect to all of the cancer research pioneers who have paved the way -- there are lots of treatments that have good results when you're diagnosed early. But when you're late stage 4, like my aunt, there really was no point, because most of the treatments don't work with late stage 4 cancers.
Michael
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So, I thought perhaps this was my purpose in life. If my aunt and uncle were distant relatives, I probably wouldn't have cared. But cancer took my parents, essentially, and it became very personal for me.
Michael
Yeah.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So I had my idea. I did a poor man's patent and mailed it to myself and I went to graduate school with a singular focus and mission to develop a cancer treatment without the typical side effects that was local treatment.
Michael
So the treatment is called, as I understand it, laser activated nanoparticle therapy, which I think is probably not something most of our audience is familiar with. So can you walk us through how it works and why it is different from the conventional treatments?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So laser-activated nanotherapy is a spin-off of what's been popular in the fields of physics, lasers, and nanotherapy as photothermal therapy, which is a spin-off of photodynamic therapy. Most people are familiar with photodynamic therapy, but if not, let me break down the history of how this came about.
So photodynamic therapy was a light-sensitive fluorescent dye that could get injected into the body, circulate for three days or so, and accumulate at the site of the tumor. And then you would shine a light, a laser, on the tumor, and it would provide a local therapy from the laser activating the photoactivatable dye.
The problem with that is that the absorption wavelength of the dye was sensitive to sunlight, so people couldn't go outside. No one wants to live a life where they can't go out in the sunlight, right? And so there was a whole emerging field of nanotechnology for all kinds of things. You name the application, nanoparticles have been explored. But specifically in cancer research there were a couple of pioneers, one at Georgia Tech and a group out of Rice University, and there are some other people around the country. You had literally the whole world trying to figure out what kind of nanoparticle could target and kill cancer.
People were creating nanorods, nanospheres, nanoshells, nanocages, nanodiamonds...I mean, you name the shape, and whether it was hollow, whether it was solid, the architecture of the nanoparticles were literally all over the spectrum. What they were made out of, iron oxide, silver, gold, silica, you name the material, right?
Michael
Yeah.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And then you talk about what size are they, 10 nanometers, 100 nanometers, 200 nanometers...and all of these different parameters impacted the characteristics of the nanoparticles. When you look at why this matters, it's because some of the more therapeutically effective nanoparticles were just toxic across the board, right? Like some of the magnetic nanoparticles, you can guide them with magnets to locate them in the tumor, but they were toxic, right, or cytotoxic.
And then you had ones that still absorbed in the visible region more than they did, and people were all over from 1064 nanometers down to 560 nanometers. They were all over the spectrum trying to figure out what's the sweet spot. It was like a race to the finish line.
The pioneers were the groups that had the gold nanorods and the gold and silica nanoshells. When they started, the idea was to have nanoparticles attached to antibodies, and this is like pairing them with the field of immunotherapy, because antibodies have receptors on their surface that target the biomarkers that are overexpressed on the cell. So the idea was, if you can use the antibodies as a delivery vehicle, the nanoparticles can come along for the ride and end up at the site of the tumor based on the accumulation of the antibodies binding to the biomarkers overexpressed on the tumor.
The whole world was all excited that we're going to have tumor-targeted nanoparticles that we can activate with the laser once they accumulated at the site of the tumor. So when I started my dissertation, the idea was that I would just make a more effective nanoparticle, because I thought they had already figured this out. So when they published their in vitro data, everyone had their antibody conjugation, and they were using all kinds of different antibodies -- anti-EGFR, HER2 receptors, for breast cancer, head and neck cancer, prostate cancer, name the cancer they were targeting with the appropriate antibody -- and in the petri dish, the nanoparticles would emit this beautiful, bright gold yellow, bright orange color. So it was, okay, you can target, image, and treat with these systems.
But then when they started publishing their in vivo data in mice, all the antibodies were omitted, and they were injecting what I like to call naked nanoparticles. Nanoparticles by themselves never had the ability to target tumors. They do a great job of absorbing the laser light, but they don't target tumors. Because some very prominent scientists said so, the world stopped and listened: nanoparticles can target tumors. And the whole time I'm in graduate school, I'm like, no, they don't target tumors, not without the antibodies.
Michael
Not without the antibodies, I see.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And so they said, well, there's this effect that allows them to accumulate at the site of the tumor called the enhanced permeability and retention effect because the tumors have compromised veins, they call it leaky vasculature. And so I'm like, this is like saying, because the gutters aren't covered on the street and you roll marbles down the street, that you targeted the gutter. No. By nature of rolling marbles, surely some will get in the gutter, but you didn't target the gutter. Marbles were going to roll everywhere and then the ones that ended up in the gutter, or in the tumor, you could then treat, but it wasn't effective.
So they lost the ability to induce, because in the petri dish, in vitro, all the cells would die. But in the mouse models, the tumors wouldn't regress, the tumors didn't shrink. And so I'm looking at this, I'm like, there are all kinds of problems that we still need to solve. So part of what I developed -- and I don't really talk about this, but since we're talking shop -- I developed a conjugation protocol that would allow the antibodies to actually bind properly.
The whole time I was working on this, everybody's like, no, that's not how it works. And I'm like, you know, I'm not a biologist, I'm not a chemist, but it seems like everybody has blindfolds on. The antibodies are like the arms attached to the nanoparticle that would grab the cancer cell biomarkers. I think if you flip it around, you could then deliver this. And they were like, well, that's not how it works.
And I'm like, okay, you can say what you want, but I'm able to show a 40% higher binding efficiency of my nanoparticles after they are conjugated to the antibodies. And I'm also delivering enough of the nanoparticles to the tumor that we can see a 40% reduction in the tumor volume after one treatment.
So, let me back up a little bit. The first idea that I had was, why don't we just put the nanoparticles directly in the tumor? And everyone's like, no, it doesn't work like that. I'm like, but why not? Why aren't we treating cancer at the site of the tumor? Who says you have to circulate a drug or a treatment through the entire body? Why? It doesn’t make sense to me? I was told well, that's how it's supposed to work. Well, who said? I don't know... I'm just a little girl from St. Louis who is just questioning things that don't make sense, and this does not make sense. They said we've done that, we tried it with drugs and it didn't work. I'm like, well, I don't know if you've seen someone experience the side effects with chemotherapy and radiation, but there's nothing pretty about that. That seems so barbaric. It seems like we should spend the billions of dollars that we're putting into cancer research on developing something more humane.
That was part of my original idea. It took me about three or four years to build up the confidence to just try it. And when I did, the tumor shrank so fast. Most cancer treatments take months or years to work, and in fifteen days the tumor was gone. I was on a schedule to measure the tumor once a week, and my advisor at the cancer center was like, no, I don't believe you, go back and measure these tumors every day and let me see the results as you go.
So, to answer your question of how does this treatment I developed that's been in the news and the subject for my research today, how does this work? I created a more efficient gold nanorod. When I studied the parameters, I thought the gold nanorod was the closest to working. So I developed a new type of gold nanorod and I structured them where they are more uniform in shape and size than the ones that were commercially available. I'm meticulous with details from the days of untangling my aunt's necklaces, right? So I really went in and untangled a lot of details and developed a nanoparticle that would have a sharper absorption peak in the near-infrared region to overlap more efficiently with the emission wavelength of the near-infrared laser.
That combination of a sharper, more distinct absorption peak of the nanorods and the emission wavelength of the laser that overlap causes the electrons inside the nanoparticles to vibrate or oscillate so fast, so quickly, that they heat up and generate enough heat to kill the cells that are nearby. And the nearby ends up being local to where we place the nanoparticles. Sometimes people say, well, is it targeted? This first iteration is not targeted, it's local on purpose, because without all of the systemic delivery, we avoid all of the systemic side effects. So, it's basically like creating a burn at the site of the tumor, just at the site of the tumor.
Michael
So for folks that are familiar with radiation oncology and radiation therapy, which has a similar mission of just targeting the tumor, how is it that you are able to do it without the collateral damage, so to speak, that can come with that approach?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So that's a great question. So most radiation is like using a spotlight to shine in the room. It's like comparing a spotlight to a laser pointer. And the laser beam that we're using is low power, like a laser pointer. Without the laser, the nanoparticles are harmless. Without the nanoparticles, the lasers are harmless. The injection site of the nanoparticle is one control, the spot size of the laser is another control. So you have to be wrong twice to kill unintended cells. You also have to be right twice in order to kill the intended cells.
Michael
Right. So from a practical standpoint, in terms of delivery, you are injecting
nanoparticles into the tumor directly.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Yes, it's a direct injection, so it's not circulating. It's a local, direct injection at the site of the tumor.
Michael
And once they're in there, the laser heats them up, and that's how the cells die.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
For a one time, ten-minute laser excitation, and then the cells die and you see the tumor regress over the course of ten to fifteen days.
Michael
Now what about a large tumor? Do you have to do repeated applications, or how much heat is generated, and therefore how much damage can it do to the tumor cells?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
So right now we are starting with smaller local tumors, and this leads a little bit into the FDA breakthrough device designation.
Michael
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And so the FDA has granted us breakthrough device designation status, which is huge and exciting. What that means is that we're basically a part of what I'm calling their sweetheart program. It's a fast track program to move us quickly into human clinical trials, and throughout, to have more of a hand holding process. Instead of things taking six to eight months to get a response from the FDA, they may respond in a week or so or less. I've gotten responses within like a day sometimes. They've rolled out the red carpet for us.
I'll tell you two things about that. One, it's exciting to have that, and frustrating, because we haven't raised the money to do all the things that the FDA is asking at this point now. That's part of why I started my 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation. But two, to circle back to your previous question about what kind of cancer, it is developed for a variety of solid tumors and could have clinical indications for breast, prostate, colorectal, brain, gliomas, and a variety of other solid tumors. But we're going to start based on what the FDA has recommended.
We're going to start in very low risk skin cancers and head and neck cancers that are superficial and are under two centimeters. So we won't start with large tumors, just so that we can get some initial human data, proof of concept that this is a viable option.
Over the last ten years, I have gone viral on social media for curing cancer, and I have to tell people, I didn't cure all cancers, and it's not a cure-all. I don't know that there exists a thing as a cure-all. But the technology I developed for solid tumors has demonstrated the complete elimination of human cancer in laboratory mice after one ten-minute treatment in the course of fifteen days, with no observable side effects, no chemotherapy, no radiation, and no surgery.
So, I'm excited about the FDA breakthrough device after pushing on this through my entire PhD program.
Michael
Yeah, that's quite an achievement. And you mentioned the money -- it always unfortunately in healthcare seems to come down to money one way or another -- I've seen an estimate of 100 million dollars as the cost of a full clinical trial process. How does a physicist go about raising a hundred million dollars?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
You know, that's such a good question, Michael.
Michael
And I'm taking notes in case I need to raise 100 million for something.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Yeah, so let me tell you -- and this is my logic, and I think it's important for people to just hear my logic -- so when I looked at what startup companies typically raise, and how much equity a startup company would have to trade to raise 100 million dollars, I realized that's the reason right there why healthcare in America is not affordable, because of the trade-off of equity early on. And by the time you raise the 100 million, you usually have no control, and people want their money back, and the price goes through the roof.
Then I looked at the statistics of, and just speaking frankly, African American female tech founders, it's like less than 0.01% of all tech startup funding. So I'm like, okay, those odds suck.
Michael
Those are pretty long odds. Yeah.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
That's all. Okay. And then I started researching cancer charities and how much money they raise. And in the United States, the top three cancer charities raise over a billion dollars a year in the name of curing cancer. The awareness campaigns they do are important. Giving rides to cancer patients, that's important. Providing emotional support for cancer patients, that's important. And I'm not saying hope is not important, hope is important, but at what point do we move beyond hope?
So I had the idea, why not disrupt the cancer charity space? There's a billion dollars a year that people are donating to cancer charities. So why can't I raise 100 million dollars in that landscape where people are giving money away to cure cancer? This seems like a realistic goal.
When I started on this ten years ago, Michael, I never imagined that I would be ten years later still trying to raise the first million I needed to start, not even scratch the surface, of the 100 million I need to finish. And I was talking with a guy on Instagram Live a couple of days ago, and he said, you know, in ten years, you haven't had any scandals, as if he were surprised.
Michael
Any scandals? Meaning, because that would give you notoriety and attention and...
Dr. Hadiyah Green
No, that was him trying to rationalize why I haven't raised the first ten million yet. I'm like, I never even had detention or got suspended from school. I was a straight A student my whole life. And sometimes people look at me, and the color of my skin or the texture of my hair, and they say, you didn't do what I did.
Michael
Yeah.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
And I don't have a big ego, but sometimes I have to tell them, Google me, find anything that I've claimed that's not true. And when you finish, I'll accept your apology, because you can't look at my track record and dispute it. You may look at the color of my skin and not like how I look and say, no, you don't want to accept it, but you can't base it on anything in fact.
My three degrees in physics, the subject of my dissertation, the subject of the $1.1 million career development award I received from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the $1.2 million merit scholar award I received from Veterans Affairs, my research has been vetted through the highest of academic channels, and the FDA breakthrough device.
Michael
Well, with the FDA breakthrough designation -- which is relatively new, that was February I think -- have you seen some traction from that?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
I have seen a lot of traction from that. And we've also gotten a lot more volunteers with my foundation, and we are learning and positioning ourselves to attract larger donors and family foundations. We have raised the first $4 million in crowdfunding, mostly in donations of $100 or less. So there are a lot of people who are rooting for me to keep this technology affordable and accessible for all, and that's the commitment.
When I started this, it was in honor of my late aunt, Ora Lee Smith. I named my nonprofit after her to pay homage to her sacrifices, because I know I wouldn't be here without her and also to stay out of the shark tank and disrupt the cancer charity space with the solution that's working and needs more financial support to move into human clinical trials.
Michael
So I think I lost track of how much you would need to take the next step. Was that $10 million dollars? And what is that first step?
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Ten million dollars is the first step. That first step is to literally do a first in human study. The FDA is requiring us to do a pig study, which is their large animal of choice for this technology, and after we show them the data for the pig study, then we go back and get approvals from the IRB, Institutional Review Board, and the FDA will review what we've gotten from the pig study and give us a green light to just show some initial data in humans, that the technology is safe. Before we even show efficacy, we just need to show that it's safe.
Michael
Right.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Once we show it's safe, then we can go back and show some efficacy and they said if we can, get any efficacy data along the way. But in the very first step, they want to make sure that the nanoparticles don't travel on their own. And I'm like, that's no problem, because they're not designed to travel, nanoparticles don't travel. And so I'm excited about the next step, and needing that financial support to take the next step is especially humbling, because we've had so many thousands and thousands and thousands of cancer patients reach out to me in every inbox and DM asking to sign up for this cancer treatment when we haven't raised the money to start the human trials.
The saddest part about going viral is when people are posting about me, they're posting the meme that I've cured cancer, not saying “and she needs help, support her nonprofit so she can have the funding she needs to start human trials.” If that message had been attached to the memes, we could have raised the first ten million to start years ago.
Michael
Yeah, so frustrating. But I think this is probably really valuable for our audience of learners and early career professionals to hear this, so that they understand the landscape of trying to do what you're doing, and also the kind of perseverance it takes.
So I'm afraid to say we're running out of time, but I would love to hear what your message is to a younger audience about your journey here, and what it takes to stay with it.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Yeah, so I say that I run across a lot of people who are super smart, but they never stop to say, how can I help humanity? How can I be of service? What good can I do on the planet? How can I make the world a better place? Most people are stuck on, how do I make more money, how do I make my legacy secure, how do I make my name great, versus how can I help?
If I were motivated by, I want a bigger house, I want a bigger car, or I want to, you know, just the financial material things, I probably would have quit by now. But because my why is bigger than me -- and I know I can't bring my loved ones back -- but the work that I'm doing could save millions of people, and it's humbling that I can't do it alone.
So, my encouragement to young people is to figure out how you can do your part, right? And this is my part. If your reason for doing it is bigger than your reasons why you quit, then you won't quit. If I just wanted to make money, I could have done that. Not that I'm taking a vow of poverty, but if money were the objective, I would have quit a long time ago and done something else.
And sometimes people say, well, I don't know what I want to do. Well, when I was coming of age, I worked with a lot of people. Had I not interned at NASA, had I not interned at the University of Rochester or in the physics labs, I would not have had enough experience and exposure to have enough scientific insight when the idea came to bring it to fruition or to develop the things. And so I also say, learn everything you can, even if it seems wildly unrelated at the time. If you're curious, if you're interested, learn and be humble, because you never know how what you know could be the next breakthrough.
Michael
Yeah, that's a really interesting piece of advice. If you are interested in something, learn it, even if you don't think it's going to help you on your path, because you may end up finding another path altogether.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think the wave of the future -- when everyone's so concerned about AI and job replacement -- I think the wave of the future is to master more than one discipline so you can be the first, or the expert, to combine a new interdisciplinary field and chart a new endeavor.
Michael
Right. Lots of opportunity there. Well, listen, this is a fascinating story, and it's one that we're going to keep tabs on, and of course we're wishing you all the best. Give us the website address so people can find out how they can support you if they wish, and of course we'll include that in the show notes as well.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Thank you. The website address is https://oralee.org/
Michael
Well, Dr. Green, I really appreciate your time, and as I say, wish you all the luck with this very encouraging path that you've chosen for yourself.
Dr. Hadiyah Green
Thank you so much. I appreciate your support, and I appreciate everyone listening as well.
Michael
I’m Michael Carrese. Thanks for checking out today’s show and remember to do your part to raise the line and strengthen the healthcare system. We’re all in this together.