Bowdoin Students Reach for New Cancer Cures

By Rebecca Goldfine
With summertime grants from Bowdoin Career Exploration and Development, Lailoo Perriello ’22 and Eva Verzani ’21 are interning for Reboot Rx, a nonprofit cofounded by a Bowdoin alumna to develop new uses for existing generic drugs.
Lailoo Perriello and Eva Verzani
Lailoo Perriello and Eva Verzani have grants from Bowdoin funded by the Peter Buck Student Internship Fund and the Annual Fund for Career Readiness, provided by Mark W. Porter ’81.

Catherine Del Vecchio Fitz ’05, who has a PhD in cancer biology and an MS in medicine from Stanford, helped found Reboot Rx this year to help cancer patients access new and affordable treatments that are already on the market for other diseases. 

"Generics can be effective, especially in conjunction with standard-of-care drugs. They can be a cheap way to improve patient outcomes," Verzani explained. 

For instance, while no definitive clinical trials have been done on Ketorolac, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, a single dose costing $50 taken at the time of breast cancer surgery shows promise in reducing the chance of recurrence. And Metformin, a diabetes drug, appears to decrease the risk of multiple cancers in the diabetes patients taking it.

Both Perriello and Verzani say they were inspired to intern for the Portland- and Boston-based organization because of its mission to make effective and inexpensive drugs available to all cancer patients. 

"I've been involved with this issue forever," Verzani said. "It is near and dear to my heart."

When Verzani was a child, she was very involved with a nonprofit founded by a family friend to catalyze the creation of new treatments for uncommon pediatric diseases. The friend, Nancy Goodman, launched Kids v Cancer after her son died of a rare form of cancer.

On a premed track at Bowdoin, Perriello said she's interested in pursuing a research career focused on cancer. "I am passionate about oncology, specifically the potential of this project to make cancer treatments more effective and accessible," she said. The intersection between cancer and COVID-19 is a pressing concern that is not yet fully understood, and with my work this summer I am at the forefront of this research. 

Their internships—like so many this summer—are remote. Verzani has been assigned two projects: one is to propose a public policy initiative that provides financial incentives for clinical trials to test generics as cancer treatments. "There is no money in generic drugs for the manufacturer," Verzani explained, "and so it is hard to find someone who can fund this."

She's also setting up a survey for physicians and patients who have used generic drugs to treat cancer, to create a record their outcomes.

Interestingly, seventy generic medicines currently being tested to treat COVID-19 also show the potential to treat cancer, Perriello said. Her main task this summer is to help compile information about these medicines for a database that will be publicly available for cancer patients and health care providers. 

"Medical professionals don’t have the time to sit down and study every case, every scientific paper to see the different possible effects on cancer  patients. This makes their life easier and helps patients find treatments easier," she said.

Both interns are interested not just in medicine, but also in public health, and are considering dual MD-MPH graduate school tracks after Bowdoin. Both said their experience with Reboot Rx is beneficial to their career goals.

"One big skill that I have been figuring out this summer is how to work independently and to confidently make decisions on my own," Verzani said. "The past two summers I worked in a lab directly under someone who had more experience than I did." 

Perriello said she's become better at synthesizing scientific information quickly and efficiently. And despite working remotely, she said she's made the most of the opportunity. "I've enjoyed being able to collaborate with people and work toward a common goal."