Can you starve a cancer cell of something it needs to survive, while leaving healthy cells largely untouched?
Dr Jean Bertoldo is exploring exactly that in aggressive brain cancers.
In this episode, we unpack the science behind a completely new approach to targeting cancer and follow what happens when an academic discovery starts becoming a drug development programme, with questions about validation, clinical strategy, IP, investment and eventually, a biotech spin-out.
Jean is a chemical biologist and drug discovery scientist at the Children’s Cancer Institute in Sydney. His team is studying cancers that depend heavily on their epigenetic machinery, including diffuse midline glioma, an aggressive childhood brain cancer.
Their approach targets the supply of histone 3 that rapidly dividing cancer cells need. The idea is deceptively simple: interrupt that supply and create enough stress that the cancer cells can no longer maintain their identity and proliferate normally.
But Jean’s project is particularly challenging because almost everything is new.
His team isn’t simply developing a drug against established biology. They are working to validate a new biological mechanism, new chemistry and its potential across several cancer indications.
Then Jean pitched the project to experienced biotech and drug development leaders at the Drug Discovery Forum.
It was his first industry pitch, and the questions exposed assumptions he hadn’t considered.
That feedback helped reshape the roadmap. Jean and his team are now progressing the scientific validation alongside a more developed commercialisation strategy covering clinical development, IP, freedom to operate, company formation and investment.
They are also working towards a potential biotech spin-out, while Jean considers another transition: what his own role could become as an academic scientist moving towards entrepreneurship.
In this episode:
This episode is Part 5 of a six-part series exploring the path from academic research to biotech and drug development, based on conversations from the 2026 Drug Discovery Forum in Sydney.
Across the series, scientists, biotech entrepreneurs, industry experts and technology transfer professionals explore what it takes to move promising research beyond the lab and towards patients.
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