A single genetic “smoke‑signal” inside a tumor can make the body’s own immune system hunt it down. This bold idea drives the research effort of biotech company Earli. CEO and co‑founder Cyriac Roeding sits down with journalist Jakob von Lindern ( DIE ZEIT) to explain how his company flips the usual cancer‑drug model on its head – and what it takes to “solve a really hard problem”.
Roeding describes Earli’s core technology as a genetic switch that turns on only in cancer cells, which allows the body to precisely target these cells and kill them. The switch “reprograms the cancer cell” to produce a protein that acts as a messenger to the immune system. “Think of it like a smoke signal coming from the cancer”, he says.
This kind of radical innovation requires a high tolerance for risk and a willingness to fail, Roeding makes clear. In lab tests, the idea worked really well, he recalls, but in with human cancer cells “we went from 97% detection or activation of the switch to 13%.”
Roeding’s answer was to diversify and move beyond diagnostics into therapeutics as well. Watch the video for details.
