Answering the COVID-19 Challenge:  Nature-Inspired Therapy Holds Promise for Cancer Treatment as Well

In these unprecedented times of COVID-19, many of the world’s pre-eminent cancer research laboratories have pivoted to respond to the need for new diagnostics and treatments for the virus. Animal Cancer Foundation is responding to this crisis with a special Comparative Oncology Grant Award for 2020 that is focused on near-term use for people suffering from the virus with longer-term implications for preventing metastatic cancer in people and pets.

PEEL Therapeutics, founded by pediatric oncologist Joshua Schiffman, MD of Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, and co-founder Dr. Avi Schroeder of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, is an emerging biotech turning to nature to beat human and animal diseases (www.peeltx.com). PEEL is investigating natured-inspired Neutrophil Targeting Peptide (NTP) therapy to target immune cells to specifically inhibit the inflammation-induced organ and tissue damage in sepsis and respiratory disease, complications faced by COVID-19 patients.

The research team has turned its attention to NTPs because in addition to potential treatment of COVID-19, these peptide therapies have indications in preventing the metastatic spread of cancers and may even have a role in enhancing immune-oncology drugs. The researchers plan to develop this therapeutic use in veterinary and human oncology in future trials, but right now they are urgently focused on COVID-19 therapy to replace reliance on ventilators and reduce the lung inflammation caused by the disease.
ACF believes strongly in the ability of this team to develop this new therapeutic, as we have previously sponsored their work on elephant p53. This research supported by Animal Cancer Foundation and others has been featured in newspaper headlines around the world and is on-going as a preventive therapeutic in development. We all want an end to the complications caused by COVID-19 and we all want to see breakthroughs for people and pets fighting cancer.

Will you join us and match our $50,000 gift to PEEL Therapeutics with another $50,000 to speed their work by making a gift to our restricted match fund today?

Click here and together, we can all make a difference in speeding development of treatment.