A US-based Kashmiri scientist is heading a study by team of researchers to treat cancer using “engineered” cancer cells. Under the technique titled “Kill Switch” the scientists are focusing on gene editing cancer cells and employing them to fight the cells of their own kind. “This study is going to be game changer,” Dr Khalid Shah, director for Stem Cell Therapeutics and Imaging at Harvard Medical School, who is leading the study told Greater Kashmir. “It will surely change the way we will be treating cancers in future…this is just a beginning.” The research has gained worldwide attention and could be an answer to the search for widely applicable anti-cancer treatment. Dr Shah said the technique was based on cancer cells’ self-homing ability – the process in which cancer cells can track the cells of their kind that have spread within the same organ or to other parts of body. The team is harnessing gene power to overcome drug delivery challenges, helping get therapeutics to tumor sites that may otherwise be difficult to reach. “With our technique, we have shown it is possible to reverse-engineer a patient’s own cancer cells and use them to treat cancer,” he said. The team developed and tested two techniques to harness the power of cancer cells. The “off the shelf” technique used pre-engineered tumor cells that would need to be matched to a patient’s HLA phenotype (essentially, a person’s immune fingerprint). The “autologous” approach used CRISPR technology to edit the genome of a patient’s cancer cells and insert therapeutic molecules. These cells could then be transferred back into the patient. To test both approaches, the team used mouse models of primary and recurrent brain cancer and breast cancer that has spread to the brain. The team, as per reports in media across world, saw direct migration of engineered cells to the sites of tumors and found evidence that the engineered cells specifically targeted and killed recurrent and metastatic cancer in the mice. The researchers reported that the treatment increased the survival of the mice. Engineered cells were equipped with a “kill switch” that could be activated after treatment – PET imaging showed that this kill switch worked to eliminate the cells. “We think this has many implications and could be applicable across all cancer cell types,” said Dr Shah who is also vice chair of research in Brigham and Women’s Hospital and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI). So far the team has reported promising results in preclinical models across multiple types of cancer cells, establishing a potential roadmap toward clinical translation for treating primary, recurrent and metastatic cancer. The team has successfully developed therapeutic stem cells for cancer, particularly brain tumors. The work on stem cells, Dr Shah feels, holds key for future of therapeutics, particularly the gene edited stem cells. “They have unveiled new possibilities,” Dr Shah said. Calling successful treatment of brain tumors as greatest challenge in oncology, Dr Shah and his team at Harvard Stem Cell Center have been engrossed in demonstrating the promise that stem cells hold to overcome this challenge. “The recognition that different stem cell types, including neural stem cells (NSCs) can integrate appropriately throughout the mammalian brain following transplantation has unveiled exciting chances for their use in neural transplantation,” he said. According to him, the team has demonstrated how different stem cell types, home to sites of cerebral pathology can be armed with therapeutic transgenes, a strategy that can be used to inhibit tumor growth. Dr Shah said the research on gene editing of cancer cells started four years ago at his lab in Harvard. It has been covered by a number of renowned media outlets across the world. Hailing from Srinagar, Dr Shah and his team have pioneered major developments in the stem cell therapy field, successfully developing experimental models to understand basic cancer biology and therapeutic stem cells for cancer, particularly brain tumors. These studies have been published in a number of very high impact journals like Nature Neuroscience, Science, PNAS, Nature Reviews Cancer, JNCI, Stem Cells and Lancet Oncology. An alumni of Burn Hall School, Dr Shah moved to Europe for his higher studies and later joined Harvard Medical School. He has authored two books, Stem Cell Therapeutics for Cancer (Wiley-Blackwell 2013), and Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Cancer Therapy (Elsevier 2014). He has won the Harvard Young Mentor Award and is a recipient of young investigator award from Alliance for cancer gene therapy (ACGT); research fellow award from American Cancer Society (ACS), distinguished research award from Academy of Radiology and Innovation awards from James McDonnell Foundation, American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) and Goldhirsh foundation. In an effort to translate the exciting therapies developed in his laboratory into clinics, Dr Shah said he has got encouraging response from biotech companies whose main objective is clinical translation of therapeutic cells in cancer patients.
Kashmiri scientist leads a research to fight cancer with ‘engineered’ cancer cells
