Professor; Associate Chair for Research
Grand Rapids Research Center
400 Monroe Avenue NW
Office 4014
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, USA
Phone: 616-234-2841
Fax: 616-234-2838
Grand Rapids Research Center
400 Monroe Avenue NW
Office 4014
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, USA
Phone: 616-234-2841
Fax: 616-234-2838
Dr. Bachmann is a tenured Full Professor of Pediatrics at Michigan State University (MSU), College of Human Medicine (CHM) and serves as Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development. For the past 30 years, his research has primarily focused on ODC/polyamines and drug development in oncology. He is best known for his preclinical work with ODC inhibitor DFMO (e.g., Oncogene, 2005; Cancer Res, 2008; Biochem J, 2018; J Biol Chem, 2018), which led to the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory neuroblastoma in phase I/II studies (PLoS One, 2015). He is credited for moving DFMO from “bench to bedside” and received the Inaugural Weinman Innovator Award for Translational Research in 2010. Since the inception of his pioneering work in 2001, DFMO (eflornithine) has entered several independent multi-center neuroblastoma phase I/II clinical studies at Children’s hospitals across the United States and abroad, through clinical trial consortia including the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) that currently conducts a randomized phase II clinical trial with neuroblastoma patients (COG-ANBL-1821). In December 2023, the FDA approved oral DFMO (aka Eflornithine, Iwilfin) for the treatment of neuroblastoma.
Dr. Bachmann collaborates with medical geneticist Dr. Caleb Bupp, MD and pediatric ICU physician Dr. Surender Rajasekaran, MD at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. Together, they defined a new ODC1-gene linked gain-of-function neurodevelopmental disorder, referred to as Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome (BABS) (Am J Med Genet, 2018; Biochem J, 2019; GeneReviews, 2022; Dev Med Child Neurol, 2024). In 2019, they launched the worldwide first FDA-approved single patient IND to treat this ODC1 patient with DFMO, reporting a remarkable therapeutic response (eLife, 2021). He is the Co-Founder and Scientific Director of the “International Center of Excellence for Polyamine Disorders” (ICPD) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. He is the PI/PD of a 5-year NIH R01 award (2023-2028) to study BABS and other polyamine-related disorders (MPIs Bupp, Casero). His patent on the treatment of BABS has been commercialized in collaboration with Orbus Therapeutics, Inc.
Further of interest to the Bachmann lab are the discovery and development of natural products-based drugs. In collaboration with colleagues in Europe, Dr. Bachmann discovered the Syrbactin class of proteasome inhibitors (Nature, 2008), a natural product for which he holds several patents. TIR-199 is the best-in-class synthetic lead compound (J Biol Chem, 2016) that was developed by Hibiskus Biopharma, Inc., an MSU-startup company that Dr. Bachmann founded in 2017 with Dr. Michael Pirrung (UC Riverside). Hibiskus was acquired by Lodo Therapeutics, Inc, in 2020. More recently, Dr. Bachmann studies the pharmacological effects of Allicin as a novel intra-tumoral agent in neuroblastoma (J Nat Prod, 2020), in collaboration with Dr. Alan Slusarenko (RWTH Aachen, Germany).