Meet Shashaanka Ashili, Ph.D. | CEO, CureScience

We had the good fortune of connecting with Shashaanka Ashili, Ph.D. and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Shashaanka, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
The current operating thesis has been an evolutionary experience. The organization was formed with a tremendous support of patients, who believed in personalized precision medicine. The initial focus was on brain cancer. However, over the years our approach and focus had been expanded. To reflect this, we have renamed the organization and expanded the mission and vision to better reflect our efforts to promote the advancements being made in mitigating immunological and neurodegenerative disorders. The organization is not the result of a single individual per se, but a collection of likeminded professionals who believe there is a more efficient way to bring novel therapies to market. The organization has evolved to the point that we believe enabling precision and pre-emptive care through patient-driven insights is the most efficient means of developing successful therapeutic outcomes. This is considered a personalized medicine approach otherwise known as precision medicine.

At CureScience™, we respect conventional wisdom; however, to make significant advances in healthcare we believe focus on personalized healthcare is a necessity. Because conventional wisdom may go unchallenged, it can create problems when innovative ideas show more promise than the “old way” of doing things. This can make exploring new ideas more difficult. Our research focuses on leveraging the immune system to use its power to prevent, control, and eliminate cancer. We believe the personalized (for each individual) immunotherapeutic approach can educate: 1) the immune system to recognize and attack specific cancer cells; 2) boost immune cells to eliminate cancer; and 3) provide the body with additional components to enhance the immune response against cancer. This personalized approach is the wave of the future in medicine. As
Investigations into neurological disorders represent a growing healthcare, financial, and logistic challenge for society and the healthcare sector, primarily due to the lack of effective treatment options. Our goal is to continue working with our academic and industry partners to provide therapeutic breakthroughs for these neurodegenerative diseases in their early stages, with a major focus on Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), motor neuron disease (including ALS), Schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
CureScience, a San Diego, California 501(c)(3) non-profit translational medicine organization, inspired by the particular need to improve the health and quality of life of patients suffering with various diseases through the application of precision medicine. The unmet healthcare needs of today can be addressed more efficiently through the applications of “Omics”. Omics, by definition, is simply the suffix of the following fields of study which include but are not limited to proteomics, metabolomics, genomics, and Healthiomics. “Omics” will play a critical role in predicting, diagnosing, and treating diseases. As such, our organization is taking a leadership role in promoting “personal medicine” to accelerate cures based on a combination of immunological, regenerative medicine and digital medicine approaches.

For example, as part of our vision to translate neuroscience research into clinical neurological practice, we are targeting neurodegenerative and developmental diseases. These disorders represent a growing healthcare, financial, and logistic challenge for society as there is a lack of effective treatment options in these areas.

Additionally, we are focused on elucidating and connecting information from digital medicine vertical to the clinical outcomes. This can only be possible by connecting patients’ medical information to the data streams from the digital medicine. The digital medicine program (Healthiomics) is an ongoing program and CureScience is currently soliciting volunteers who meet certain criteria.

In brain tumor research, while our understanding of the biological basis of brain tumor development has improved, and newer treatment modalities have been developed, survival for many types of malignant primary brain tumors has not improved significantly. Malignant glioma (brain tumor) is the most common and aggressive primary brain cancer in adults. It is a deadly disease and remains so despite many novel therapies. Some of these therapies are in the clinic while some are currently in different stages of clinical testing. It is important to bring to the clinic newer treatments that can improve the survival and quality of life of patients with glioma. At CureScience™, we focus on developing more effective therapies against glioma that prevents malignant gliomas from suppressing the immune system. In addition to currently available drugs that kill the tumor, we are working on cancer peptide vaccines, a promising cancer immunotherapy that can induce cancer-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in tumors. The combination may prove to be powerful in the cure of this deadly disease.

This is simply an overview of the work ongoing at CureScience. We are an evolving team of scientists whose goal is to bring new therapies to market faster and safer than heretofore considered.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
San Diego County is one of the most beautiful areas in the country. Traveling along Route 101, you get incredible views of the ocean. Travel inland to Mt. Soledad gives an amazing panoramic view of San Diego, Mission Bay, the Pacific Ocean, and the mountain range to the east. La Jolla offers a variety of restaurants with a view of the oceans. These include George’s, Eddie V’s, The Crabcatcher and many more. La Jolla Cove is wonderful to walk through watching the seals and further away watching surfers show off their amazing skills. La Jolla Shores has several eateries as well. Driving up the beach from La Jolla, you will visit the town of Del Mar, Solana Beach, and my favorite Encinitas. Further north is Carlsbad. It is a beautiful town and inland the sprawling hills with the beautiful homes are breathtaking. From Carlsbad, traveling southeast, you will eventually come to Rancho Santa Fe, with mid-century architecture, along with people walking their horses along the road. The city of San Diego has several great restaurants and shopping malls. A walk along the bay affords views of giant Aircraft carriers, docked cruise liners, and restored sailing ships. A visit is well worth it…

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Dr. Shashaanka Ashili, Dr. Sandeep Pingle, Dr. Feng Lin, Dr. Misa Anekoji, Dr. Pawan Patro, Mr. Mathew Loren, and I, Dr. Lawrence D. Jones have been instrumental in engaging patients to tell their stories to the public at-large and by doing so inspire hope in mitigating some of the fear and trepidation that new patients undergo when beginning treatment. But patient engagement is not the only way that we helped. For example, Dr. Feng Lin is developing an immunological cancer vaccine to treat specific cancers using the body’s own immune system. So much more work needs to be done, but we are grateful to our colleagues who had the foresight, the courage and focus to address these unmet needs with novel therapeutic approaches. Frankly, we are deeply appreciative of their efforts and with continued support from the community, we hope to continue in our work. Please further appreciate that there are many more that can be thanked for the financial contribution, scientific and business guidance.

Website: https://www.curescience.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curescience/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/curescience

Twitter: https://twitter.com/curescience

Facebook: https://facebook.com/CureScience

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZbCuoxilwtbDU2G-6xn6Q

Other: https://theorg.com/org/curescience

Image Credits
Misa Anekoji Sandeep Pingle Shashaanka Ashili Larry Jones Amanda Willburn Feng Lin Matt Loren