Mario Acunzo, PhD, designs artificial molecules and uses them to target cancer-causing genetic mutations in hopes of developing new treatments for lung cancer and other forms of disease.

He joined VCU Massey Cancer Center as a member of the Developmental Therapeutics research program in June 2017 and is an assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Internal Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine.

Recently, he published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America journal that described how he was able to create artificial microRNAs, small non-coding molecules, that effectively targeted KRAS mutations in animal models of non-small cell lung cancer.

Following the results of this study, Acunzo hopes to pair nanoparticles with artificial microRNAs to more effectively target tumor sites in vivo.

A shared dream of he and his wife, Gulia Romano, who collaborates on his research with him as a project manager at VCU, is to test his molecules through clinical trials and potentially extend survival for patients with aggressive forms of cancer, such as those characterized by the KRAS mutations where there aren’t any known cures.

“I want to create more experiments to test this molecule in vivo and I want to accelerate the results because it’s a long journey. Since it’s a long journey, I would like to start now,” Acunzo said, hoping to collaborate with other Massey researchers who study rare and aggressive cancers once his technology is established.

Although his research is focused in lung cancer cells, Acunzo is hopeful that his scientific approach could be beneficial for any tumors with the KRAS mutation – including pancreatic, colon and liver cancers – and possibly even tumors defined by other mutations.