Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Ray Lee is the CEO of Teclison, focused on overcoming the limitations of existing immunotherapy for treating liver cancer in part caused by the fact that the liver is a highly immunotolerant organ. The key is to make the tumor a low-oxygen environment and delivering a drug that only works on the tumor. Ray elaborates, "First, let me explain what the TATE represents. It stands for the Trans-arterial TEC-001 Embolization. TEC-001 is the pipeline compound we've been trying to develop. This compound is a so-called prodrug. In other words, by itself, it has a low activity. But once in the low-oxygen environment, the drug is going to be activated. What we're trying to develop is to create a very innovative way to convert the tumor into an environment with low oxygen. And this low-oxygen environment is exclusive within the tumor but not in the normal liver nor in the systemic organs." "So once they have this catheter in place, they will inject our drugs, the TEC-001, directly through the catheter into the tumor