By Mitch M. Rosenthal

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From a simple whiteboard concept at the MIT lab to FDA approval, a bladder cancer treatment system is set to change the lives of patients with high-risk, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The approval marks the culmination of over a decade’s worth of research and development, originating in the collaborative efforts of Professors Michael Cima and Robert Langer from MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. This groundbreaking device, designed for localized drug delivery, has been developed with significant backing from the National Institutes of Health and MIT’s Deshpande Center, according to MIT News.

Technology is always advancing, but it’s not everyday that those advancements result in a transformative cancer treatment. The technology in question began as an engineering challenge, tasked to marry drug delivery with the intuitive practices of urologists. “We wanted urologists to know what to do with the system without even reading the instructions for use. That’s pretty much how it came out,” Cima told MIT News. Indeed, the device’s design allows it to be used within current medical procedures with minimal learning curve. Its usage has thus far been promising as per the results of a pivotal study showing an 82.4 percent cancer-free rate in patients resistant to standard care, with results sustained over nine months for many.

Behind this medical device is a story of multi-disciplinary collaboration. It’s not just about the researchers and lab technicians, but also encompasses the myriad people who contribute to such innovations, from academic grant providers to patient-participants in clinical trials. “Drug products like this take an enormous amount of effort,” Cima explained. He highlighted the indispensable role that the MIT ecosystem played in bringing together the diverse group of over 1,000 contributors who have been part of this medical breakthrough.

The path to this point was long and filled with intense research and feedback from failed clinical trials to ensure they were building the right solution. Early efforts involved a dedicated team who painstakingly gathered information, leading to a novel ‘shape memory’ alloy for the device. “We learned a lot in the process of writing everything down,” Cima noted. “We learned what not to build and what to avoid.” With a prototype built, the emergence of TARIS Biomedical LLC and subsequent acquisition by Johnson & Johnson positioned the technology for its final leap into the medical market. The system now stands approved to offer a new treatment option to certain patients, a significant stride in the ongoing battle against bladder cancer that began on the whiteboard in an MIT lab.