One of the most successful YouTube icons or self-styled “influencers” of all time is Jimmy Donaldson aka #MrBeast with 245 million followers, according to Wikipedia.
If that sounds like an insane number, consider that lead EpicentRx therapy, AdAPT-001, is Mr. Best, or at least Mr. Way Better in comparison to Mr. Beast with trillions and trillions of followers.
How’s that?
Well, AdAPT-001 is a self-replicating adenovirus, administered on every other week basis, that expresses a TGF-β trap, which binds to and neutralizes the immunosuppressive cytokine, TGF-β, that many tumors oversecrete to their benefit. In each cancer cell that it infects, and millions to billions of cancer cells are found in every tumor, AdAPT-001 directs the production of up to 100,000 infectious viral particles or clones over the course of days, and these clones accumulate in the cell, which eventually disintegrates or lyses and scatters its contents.
If we assume conservatively that AdAPT-001 infects 10,000 cells per tumor during each administration, then that right there is ~1 trillion clones or followers/subscribers per patient and per administration.
The more patients and/or the more tumors that AdAPT-001 treats the higher that number becomes.
And talk about a mega-influencer that goes viral with every single “post!”
AdAPT-001 influences not only cancer cells to make trillions of viral particles, and not only the immune system to attack cancer cells wherever they are, but it also influences patients and their families, presumably for the better, every time it causes tumors to shrink either alone or in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor.
And because AdAPT-001 is targeted only to tumors, it is really and truly an influencer rather than an “influenzer,” meaning that it does not cause cough, runny nose, or sore throat, as its well-tolerated safety profile demonstrates to date.