A British slang word (you know how we absolutely love the Brits – that’s true AE), which may derive from the French word blaguer, to joke, blag means to bluff, fib, con, or bs. Quintessential blaggers – not bloggers note the distinction – are lawyers, salesmen, politicians, fortune tellers, and almost anyone with an Instagram account. 😆 Cancer cells also make this list because of how they manage to steer immune cells, who should – and normally would – eliminate them, to the Dark Side.
One of the main Dark Side emissaries is transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β). This is a Sith-like cytokine that many tumor types overexpress because of its immunosuppressive, profibrotic, proangiogenic, and general protumor properties.
The Jedi to the TGF-β Sith, an analogy that specially makes sense on “May the 4th be with you day” aka #StarWarsDay aka tomorrow, is lead EpicentRx therapy, AdAPT-001, which wields, not a lightsaber, but something even more useful, a TGF-β trap. This trap eliminates TGF-β, which may force – did you catch the subtleness of the pun in “may force”? Proud of ourselves, we are – tumors to respond to a checkpoint inhibitor to which they were previously resistant. Call it the AdAPT TrAPT. The AdAPT-001 TrAPT is still a Padawan or new kid on the block, having only relatively recently entered clinical trials, but so far has proven to be such a worthy, and formidable adversary against several hard-to-treat tumor types among them sarcomas, colorectal cancer, and triple negative breast cancer (#TNBC) that we imagine the FDA Jedi High Council will see fit to approve it in the not-too-distant future, even though, as Master Yoda says, “impossible to see, the future is.”
As Yoda might also say, “such badassery, hard to ignore it is.”
And if Yoda had hailed from England on Earth instead of the far-away planet, Dagobah, or if the director had been Guy Ritchie instead of George Lucas, we might have heard (hey it’s possible), “blag you I will not.”
