Discovery could lead to cancer cure
Corinth graduate on front lines of scientific research
Reprinted from the Glens Falls Post-Star , February 19, 2007
By Lisa Bramen
It isn't often that Corinth can claim a role in fighting cancer.
Patrick Harran, a Corinth native and graduate of Corinth Central School and Skidmore College, made headlines recently for his role in developing a compound that shows promise as a cancer treatment.
Harran, 37, is a professor of biochemistry at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where, for the last eight years, he has led the effort to develop a synthetic form of a toxin derived from a rare sea creature that resembles a translucent jelly doughnut.
In pre-clinical trials, the synthetic form of the toxin, diazonamide A, reduced human tumors implanted in mice without the harmful side effects, such as significant weight loss or the loss of white blood cells, often experienced with other forms of cancer treatment.
If further testing shows the compound is safe and effective in humans, the result could eventually be a stronger cancer drug that's easier to tolerate than today's chemotherapies.
Harran is cautiously optimistic about the compound's potential. But he warned that it is too early to know if it will result in a new drug for humans.
"Lets not get ahead of ourselves," he said in a telephone interview Friday. "The basic science here is awesome. The earliest results in animal tests are fantastic, but we have many other hurdles to jump before we can get this into people."
Within two days after the study was published, Harran said, he had 100 e-mails from people desperate to help a loved one with cancer, asking if they could use the drug.
Harran and his research partner, Xiaodong Wang, founded a company called Joyant Pharmaceuticals, with funding from a venture capital firm, that will conduct further tests on the compound. His wife, Susan, whom he met at Yale, is a scientist there.
Growing up in Corinth, the only child of Richard and Sandra Harran, Harran never imagined he'd someday become an acclaimed scientist. He was far more interested in playing hockey, baseball and, especially, golf.
"I wanted to be a professional athlete," he said. "But I'm 5-foot-8."
He fondly recalled his childhood in Corinth in the '70s and '80s, when it was a thriving mill town. His father worked for International Paper. His mother worked in the library at Skidmore College.
Harran still visits Corinth occasionally, although both of his parents died in recent years.
An inspiring high school chemistry teacher, Mike DeJoseph, first interested Harran in chemistry. It was at Skidmore, though, where his future career really started to take shape.
He was accepted at Skidmore a year early, at 16, and got a free education since his mother was a school employee.
Harran credits a chemistry professor, Raymond Giguere, with having the biggest impact on his future direction.
Giguere still teaches at Skidmore and remains in touch with Harran.
"He was brought to my attention by the chair as someone who was very bright but not sure where he wanted to go," Giguere said, recalling his first meeting with Harran, shortly after he started teaching at Skidmore.
Giguere asked Harran if he'd be interested in helping him with some research, which was still a rarity at the small liberal arts college at the time.
"He laughed at me," Giguere said. But they worked together for three years and published several papers, giving Harran a taste of the life of a research scientist and an idea of the impact he could have.
"He was a very strong student," Giguere said. "He was excellent in the lab."
Yet, when Giguere suggested he apply to graduate school, Harran wasn't sure. He told him he was considering taking a year off to work on his golf game.
He applied to several schools and was accepted to all, including Yale. The golf game would have to wait.
After Yale, Harran went to Stanford University for his Ph.D., before winding up as a professor at UT Southwestern, where he is the Mar Nell and F. Andrew Bell Distinguished Chair in Biochemistry.
To Harran, chemistry is beautiful and creative.
"Synthetic chemistry is like painting or architecture," he said. "We have almost infinite possibilities in the ways we can create new materials. ... Once you get past the rote knowledge base you need to have to play the game, the game itself is actually really fun."
Harran's work on diazonamide A is remarkable, Giguere said, for several reasons.
"He accomplished the synthesis of an impossible compound," he said.
When the sea squirt from which the toxin derives was first discovered in 1990, off the coast of the Philippines, scientists raced to develop a synthetic form.
But the synthetic compound didn't match the properties of the natural compound.
The scientists had been basing their synthesis on the characterization of the molecule that had been published by another lab in 1991. Harran discovered that the original characterization was incorrect, and, in 2001, uncovered the correct structure.
Those moments, when you see something you've never seen before, are the ones chemists live for, he said.
"Discovering a new type of reaction or finding something out about a molecule that, for example, could be very useful, or could change people's lives?That's remarkable," he said. "And you're the first person to ever see that."
2007 the Post-Star