There was a moment, eight years ago, that kept Carla Grandori up at night.
“Can you use your technology to help me?” a cancer patient had asked her.
Grandori, a reluctant researcher at the time, thought she needed to accumulate more data for her technology.
“But when I thought deeper … the call of that patient changed my way of thinking and the direction of my research completely,” she said. “My work is now motivated to help patients as fast as possible.”
It’s still the driving force behind her biotech company SEngine Precision Medicine, which she co-founded five years ago. The company uses technology to simultaneously test dozens cancer drugs against a patient’s unique tumor using tissue grown from a biopsy of the tumor and tested outside the body, sparing patients “often needless, ineffective and toxic treatments.”
What is the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? I was raised in Italy and attended medical school in Rome. But at 21 years old I left my comfortable home, my parents and much beloved siblings to travel to New York. I was drawn by new cancer fighting technology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I literally arrived in New York without a position, and called the lead physician. An impromptu visit turned into a volunteer position, and I returned to New York City the following year as an intern in one of the leading laboratories studying cancer genes at The Rockefeller University. To earn money, I painted apartments on weekends. But I was not very good at it. My hands were made for miniaturized and high-precision work.
As more and more innovation happens in our region, do you have any concerns about how it is being used and/or regulated? My major concern is the gap between innovation in medicine and the adoption in the clinic. It seems that there is a language barrier between health administration, clinics and what goes on in adjacent laboratories and biotechs. The same is true in laboratories that work in isolation and do not see that the technology they’re developing could be so useful to patients.
What is the first memory you have of using your creativity? I sold homemade crafts on the streets of Rome. My high school friend Frida and I made pictures and dolls. This was great fun, until one year a nurse from the university hospital where I was working as a medical student asked, “What are you doing here, Doctor?”
