For Everett Stone, being a cancer researcher is not so different from being a blacksmith. "I feel like an overarching theme in my career is that I've made many, many tools. Some of them are good enough to be medicines," he says.
Stone was recently profiled on the University of Texas at Austin's website.
He started his career running his own horseshoeing business and continues to use his blacksmithing skills to forge kitchen knives.
He co-founded two biopharmaceutical startups to take discoveries in the lab and turn them into clinical treatments for cancer. He is currently working on a new drug that could help the immune system fight cancer cells before they take hold. It's based on a discovery that some cancer cells secrete a molecule called MTA that appears to protect them from the immune system. The drug neutralizes this defense mechanism, making cancer vulnerable again to the immune system.
"In a couple of [animal] models here, we're getting complete cures," says Everett.
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