William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP, president of UT Health San Antonio, joined three fellow presidents on Oct. 15 to discuss the newly announced San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics. Dr. Henrich participated in a panel with Dr. Taylor Eighmy, president of The University of Texas at San Antonio; Dr. Larry Schlesinger, president of Texas Biomedical Research Institute; Adam Hamilton, president of Southwest Research Institute; and moderator Bob Rivard. The event, hosted by the Rivard Report, was the “Medical Forum II: The Growing Impact and Importance of San Antonio’s Billion-Dollar Collaborative.”

“Our institutions have had very strong and very active partnerships in the past, and I said to each of my colleagues, if we collaborated and brought our unique programs to bear and built new bridges to each other, then what could happen would be a puff of wind in San Antonio’s sails,” President Henrich said.

“This city has way more to offer the world than we’ve been telling the world,” Dr. Eighmy said.

“It is time that we in San Antonio recognize what we have. We have excellence in areas that is not in Austin, Houston, Dallas or College Station.” Dr. Schlesinger said.

“We have all the different capabilities to do what we need to do, to form a very powerful aggregate that will make us competitive in the global marketplace,” Hamilton said.

Dr. Henrich provided a word picture of what the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics means:

“Think of seasonal allergies as an example. We all develop cedar fever or spring fever or something like that. We go to the store and buy Zyrtec or Claritin to treat our allergies, and if 10 of us do that, then what will happen is two or three of us will get complete relief, two or three of us will get moderate relief and a couple of us will get almost no relief. What’s at the heart of precision therapeutics is to understand the biology behind those varied results. Why is it that the same medicine, with the same distribution in the body from person to person, works well in one, moderately in another and not at all in a third person?

“This becomes very important in serious, life-threatening illnesses like cancer. Giving a universal drug to treat a cancer will work to varying degrees in different people with the same cancer. It turns out that their cancers are not the same, the people are not the same and the distribution isn’t the same. So what precision medicine has as its overarching goal is to dig into the why of that. Why does variation happen from person to person and what are all the variables that go into it, such as the age of a person or the medicines they are taking? Each of these factors is really important. People can benefit from precise aim — a ‘ready, aim, shoot’ strategy rather than ‘ready, shoot, aim.’ If we can do this in exactly the right sequence, then the toxic side effects of the medicine will be reduced because we are aiming at the particular issue that we want to affect, and the efficacy will dramatically rise.”

Twelve proposals have already been submitted by scientific teams from the institutions for consideration to receive funding from the partnership, the leaders said.

Precision therapeutics is the future, Dr. Henrich said. “(Hockey star) Wayne Gretsky’s father was asked once why his son was so successful, and he said, ‘Well, he skates to where the puck is going to be.” This is where the puck is going to be.”

Related: A special insert in the San Antonio Business Journal as well as its sister newspapers in Austin, Dallas and Houston highlights the recently announced San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics.

View and read the insert

Related: San Antonio research institutions announce partnership in precision therapeutics

San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics website

The presidents of San Antonio’s four largest research institutions announced on Oct. 15 that they are providing $800,000, collectively, for a major initiative in precision therapeutics. The process of precision therapeutics ultimately leads to breakthrough treatments that can be individualized to specific patient populations.

The new San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics (SA PPT) is being established by UT Health San Antonio, Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI^®).

While precision medicine generally focuses on personalized interventions that are based on genetics, environment and diet, precision therapeutics represents a unique merger of this discipline with the complete drug discovery pathway, encompassing and integrating the two which has not been done before.

San Antonio mirrors what the country will be

Ethnic diversity makes the Alamo City a prime location for the development of a precision therapeutics model. With a Hispanic population that is expected to double by the year 2050, San Antonio currently reflects the demographics that the nation will experience in the coming decades. Of the city’s 1.5 million residents, 65% are Hispanic, and of this group, 91% are of Mexican descent.

“The San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics is an innovative and high-impact initiative that will put the patient first by fundamentally changing the way new treatments are developed for cancer, obesity, diabetes, infectious diseases and other debilitating conditions,” said UT Health San Antonio President William Henrich, M.D. “Diversity is the key to discovering and developing improved and more effective drug therapies. Due to its diverse population, San Antonio is the exemplar for this groundbreaking partnership.”

Powerful quartet of contributors

Texas Biomed, UTSA, UT Health San Antonio and SwRI will each contribute unique assets and expertise to the SA PPT.

UT Health San Antonio, one of the nation’s leading academic health and research institutions, is home to the Mays Cancer Center, a clinical and research enterprise affiliated with the world-renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center. The Mays Cancer Center, one of only four National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Centers in Texas, includes the renowned Institute for Drug Development. UT Health San Antonio also features the Center for Renal Precision Medicine, the Center on Smart and Connected Healthcare Technologies, the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. To advance the SA PPT, UT Health San Antonio will offer nine institutional core laboratories, including those focused on mass spectrometry, lipidomics, metabolomics and X-ray crystallography as well as biobanking, high-resolution optical imaging, single-cell analyses and flow cytometry.

A pioneer of biomedical breakthroughs, Texas Biomed is a world-leader in the science of infectious diseases and their associations with other disease states and susceptible populations. Its strengths include research programs in tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and other parasitic diseases, hepatitis and hemorrhagic viruses, aging and obesity and other complex metabolic disorders.

UTSA’s research portfolio is heavily focused on biomedicine, including neuroscience and brain health, infectious diseases, and regenerative and molecular medicine. Additionally, it is home to the nation’s top cybersecurity program and has robust expertise in cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence, which will lead to technological innovation and the creation of new algorithms to accelerate drug discovery and therapeutics.

SwRI, a leading applied science institution, has a rich history in advancing and supporting commercialization of drug and formulation technology to improve patient health care. It has developed and licensed multiple technologies to fight infectious disease, reduce pain and treat addiction, mitochondrial poisoning and cancer. Its scientists offer vast expertise in micro and nanoencapsulation technologies that solve complex drug delivery problems and accelerate drug discovery and development.

Liz Tullis has been named SA PPT Interim Operations Director. She will be responsible for establishing routines and governance, operational performance and strategic planning. More information on the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics is available at www.sappt.org.

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