Daring to dream: With INVO’s support, Jaehyuk Choi is pursuing solutions for one of human health’s most complex problems: cancer.
“With its different perspectives and values, INVO is helping us navigate translation and the business side of research and innovation. It’s a lofty ambition to think there’s a chance we can cure cancer, but we believe in the technology and are grateful for a partner like INVO helping us pursue that goal.””
Jaehyuk Choi
Jack W. Graffin Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine
Ask Jaehyuk Choi about his research goals and he shares an admittedly audacious two-word reply.
“Cure cancer.”
Choi acknowledges simply saying those words aloud seems a bit naïve, even irrational. Modern science, after all, has been aggressively chasing new cancer therapeutics, treatments, and protocols for decades, yet the disease refuses to budge, contributing to an estimated 10 million deaths each year and millions more forever-altered lives.
But Choi believes cures are within reach, particularly by shifting immunology from a philosophical problem – “Figuring out a code,” Choi calls it. – to an engineering problem.
A physician scientist and member of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine faculty since 2015, Choi has devoted recent years to investigating the complexities and idiosyncrasies of T-cell cancers. His Northwestern-based lab then utilizes that information to develop genetically engineered T-cell therapies. Such approaches, Choi notes, have worked miraculously on blood cancers, but struggled to generate productive results with solid tumors, which represent about 90 percent of all adult cancers.
With an urgent spirit to bring solutions to market, especially since the technology developed in his lab can exist within current products, Choi’s involvement with INVO has intensified over recent years.
Leveraging its work with other Northwestern inventors, INVO has helped Choi protect intellectual property (IP) from his lab and determine a robust IP strategy. The office has also provided critical support and counseling, including legal advice, translational guidance, and preparing Choi for interactions with industry and investors.
In 2023, Choi co-founded a startup to take his lab’s foundational IP to market, one that has already completed its seed round of funding to catapult its efforts.