Alum’s “Tumor Paint” research featured in CBS Sunday Morning

March 20, 2017

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – Scorpions can be deadly, but as Dr. Jim Olson knows, they can also save lives. Olson, a 1984 Western Michigan University alumnus, is a brain cancer physician and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. His research on a tiny molecule that lights up brain tumors so neurosurgeons can better distinguish cancer from normal tissue, is the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning interview that aired March 12

“We were inspired by a 16-year-old girl who had a brain tumor,” Olson tells CBS reporter Susan Spencer. “After 12 hours of surgery, the surgeons left behind a big piece. And we decided that day to find a way to make the cancer light up so that surgeons could see it while they’re operating.”

Olson’s team developed Tumor Paint by re-engineering scorpion venom (chlorotoxin), which naturally targets brain cancer cells, by tagging it with a molecule that acts like a flashlight. The process causes brain tumors to “light up” during surgery so the margins can be seen more easily. Olson says the goal is to help surgeons remove as much cancer as possible while safely leaving normal brain tissue intact.

“Sometimes it’s really hard for surgeons to tell what is cancer and what is normal,” Olson says. “In the brain, you can’t take out a big chunk of normal just to make sure you got the cancer cells, and Tumor Paint distinguishes clearly the difference between brain cancer and normal brain in all of our experiments we’ve done so far.”

Olson says Tumor Paint could be an FDA-approved reality as soon as 2019. “I think this will potentially be the biggest improvement in cancer surgery, maybe, in 50 years,” he said.

JAMES OLSON, M.D., Ph.D. (B.S. ’84, Biomedical Sciences)

Olson earned his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Western Michigan University and the Lee Honors College in 1984. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1989 and an M.D. in 1991, both from the University of Michigan. He completed his residency in pediatrics in 1994 and completed his fellowship in pediatric oncology in 1997, both at the University of Washington.

He currently is a professor of pediatric hematology-oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a full member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Olson is a physician scientist who cares for children with brain tumors and discovers and develops new cancer therapies. His lab's work led to five national clinical trials, of which he leads a Phase III trial through the Children’s Oncology Group. 

Olson is the founder of Presage Biosciences and Blaze Bioscience: The Tumor Paint Company.  He authored “Clinical Pharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple,” which has been the most used pharmacology board review book for more than 20 years. In 2013, Olson and colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center launched Project Violet, a citizen science initiative that is uses crowd funding to develop a fundamentally new class of anti-cancer compounds derived from organisms such as violets, scorpions and sunflowers, to attack cancer cells while leaving healthy cells untouched.

For more information on his research, click here.