Vladimir Torchilin is intent on knocking out tumors with a nanopreparation that releases multiple active components.
By Mark Crawford
Vladimir Torchilin, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern University and director of its Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine, grew up in Moscow in the years following World War II. Like most boys, he had a keen interest in arms, ammunition, and explosives.
“I was imagining myself as a resistance fighter when I nitrated glycerol in our kitchen at age of twelve,” he remembers. “Fortunately, my mother, who knew chemistry pretty well, caught me before everything exploded. That event definitely shaped my interest toward chemistry.”
Later he took his passion for chemistry to the postgraduate level, receiving a doctorate in chemical kinetics and catalysis from Moscow State University in 1971. During his doctorate program he was faced with the decision of working on a traditional polymer chemistry project, or a novel project that involved mimicking enzymes with synthetic polymers. He chose the second option, “which naturally tied into my strong interests in natural compounds,” he says.
Torchilin found this research so interesting that he joined the Russian Cardiology Center to work on new thrombolytic drugs—the defining experience that drew him into the field of pharmaceutical sciences. “When I saw happy patients successfully treated with a novel drug that we had developed and brought into production and clinical use, I realized that helping people regain their health is the biggest reward one can receive over his or her lifetime,” says Torchilin. “I decided to make pharmaceutical sciences my career.”
DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
After receiving a doctor of science degree in bioorganic chemistry from Moscow State University in 1980, Torchilin taught biochemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at several institutions, including the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, the University of California, and Harvard Medical School; he has been a faculty member at Northeastern University since 1998 and chaired the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences from 1998 until 2008.
Major research interests include physiologically active polymers and their use as drug carriers, polymeric drugs, slow-release systems, targeted drug delivery, experimental cancer therapy, and pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of slow-release drugs. In recent years, Torchilin has focused on engineering systems for targeted delivery of therapeutic and diagnostic agents, especially tumor targeting and targeting within the cardiovascular system.
His many achievements and awards include the 2010 Controlled Release Society Founders Award, the 2012 Life Time Achievements Award from the Journal of Drug Targeting, the 2012 Alec Bangham Life Time Award, the 2013 Blaise Pascal Medal for Biomedicine from the European Academy of Sciences, and the recent 2017 Outstanding Excellence Award from Pharmaceutica Congress. Torchilin has also cofounded seven companies, holds more than 40 patents, published more than 450 original papers and more than 200 reviews and book chapters, and written and edited 12 books. Google Scholar shows more than 51,000 citations of his papers with H-index of 100. He is editor-in-chief of Current Drug Discovery Technologies, Drug Delivery, and OpenNano. In 2005–2006 he served as a president of the Controlled Release Society. In 2011, Times Higher Education ranked him number 2 among top world scientists in pharmacology for the period of 2000–2010.
Among his many publications, he is especially excited about a 2016 paper he coauthored in Small, where his team describes a nanopreparation coloaded with doxorubicin and miRNA that releases these active components separately in response to two different stimuli characteristic of tumors—high intracellular glutathione and overexpressed matrix metalloprotease.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the first—if not the very first—successful attempt to make a nanosystem that can release drugs at different sites responding to different stimuli,” states Torchilin. “Doxorubicin was released from its conjugate with a polymer on the cancer cell surface under the action of overexpressed matrix metalloprotease, while miRNA was released in the cell cytoplasm by excessive glutathione.”
WORK HARDER
When asked what it takes to be a good leader, Torchilin responds with some straightforward advice: “Instead of thinking about being or becoming a leader, perhaps the most important thing is just do your job to the best of your abilities and be always able and willing to assist other people working with you, especially those in the early stages of their careers.”
Torchilin maintains he has no specific leadership philosophy and never really cared about reaching a certain position, or achieving a certain level of recognition. “I was just enjoying what I was doing and having a lot of fun,” he says. “Everything else came along as a result. Work harder than everyone else and always be ready to share your ideas, your knowledge, and your results.”
His other piece of advice is not becoming complacent or comfortably satisfied with your progress. “There are plenty of smart people around—many of whom are smarter than you—so don’t be too disappointed if somebody else publishes your brilliant idea before you do,” he advises. “Don’t mourn the loss—begin working on another idea right away and maybe this time you will be first.”
That hard-working approach continues to shape his research today. Torchilin is still a resistance fighter, with drugs as his weapons of choice. He is intent on engineering a nanopreparation to treat multidrug-resistant tumors, which will “act like a therapeutic missile with dividing heads.” Such a preparation could be coloaded with more than one drug (or drug and siRNA/miRNA), which are then released in different intracellular or extracellular compartments in response to specific local stimuli for the maximum efficacy.
He also hopes to find time in the near future to pursue a number of nonpharma interests, including collecting and reading books, listening to music, collecting art, and writing and publishing short fiction in Russian.
MAKING PHARMA BETTER
Overall, Torchilin believes the pharmaceutical sciences are on solid ground. He is adamant that the industry needs much closer interaction and collaboration among the scientists who are making new drugs and delivery systems and the clinicians, who understand at a deeper level what patients really need. “We also need to work in close contact with the specialists in the pharma industry who can accurately judge if the systems we are developing are really scalable and can be converted into real products,” he says.
Success is best achieved, he adds, by staying on top of new developments in your field and being open to collaboration with colleagues, rather than viewing R&D as strictly a secretive competition. And, of course, put in lots of hard work. “Never count the hours you spend in the lab—always the more, the better,” he urges. “Read a lot and remember that good science did not appear with the onset of PubMed—many outstanding and still-worthy papers have been published before that.”
Research can be isolating work. With increased competition for funding, and concerns about protecting data, there is often an atmosphere of nondisclosure and secrecy among researchers, of not giving anything away. However, the key to developing knowledge and breaking barriers is sharing ideas through collaboration—and there is no better vehicle for this than AAPS.
“AAPS is a fantastic organization,” says Torchilin. “Regular participation in AAPS meetings allowed me to build a great professional network for opinion exchange and scientific collaborations. Chairing the AAPS Nanotechnology focus group deepened my involvement in both AAPS activities and nanomedicine as a research area. Finally, awards from AAPS and being elected as an AAPS Fellow have further encouraged me to work hard and show myself that I deserve these awards.”
Mark Crawford is a science and technology freelance writer based in Madison, Wis.