Can a Diabetes Drug and Immunotherapy Help Treat Brain Cancer?
Defne Bayik, Ph.D., is pioneering new treatments to find combination therapies that may help T-cell response against glioblastoma.
Article Summary
- Glioblastoma is a common, deadly and difficult-to-treat cancer with a standard of care that hasn’t changed since 2005.
- Dr. Defne Bayik is researching combination therapies that may help T-cell response against glioblastoma.
- Dr. Bayik thinks may be a way to treat glioblastoma with a combination of drugs including immunotherapy and existing drugs.
The standard of care for glioblastoma has remained the same since 2005. But Defne Bayik, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, hopes to make inroads to change this.
Dr. Bayik was recently awarded a $600,000 grant from the V Foundation (Victory Over Cancer Foundation) to aid in her research. The funds will be disbursed in increments of $200,000 over three years.
A Deadly Cancer
Glioblastoma, a highly aggressive, invasive and fast-growing form of brain cancer located in a delicate region of the body, is extremely difficult to treat and evades the body’s immune response. It is the deadliest form of brain cancer, with only 5% to 7% of patients surviving more than five years.
Glioblastoma accounts for 50.1% of all primary malignant brain tumors, and the average length of survival is around eight months. Treatments are expensive, they can take a toll on their patients and, oftentimes, they do not succeed in extending survival beyond a few months.
Dr. Bayik, though, thinks there may be a way to treat glioblastoma with a combination of drugs including immunotherapy and existing drugs.
An emerging strategy for treating glioblastoma involves boosting the tumor-killing abilities of immune cells. Although tumor-fighting CD8+ T cells are capable of eliminating tumors, cancer disrupts their effectiveness, she explained. Efforts to counteract this dysfunction have not yet proven successful. However, Dr. Bayik and her team recently found that DPP-4 is present on dysfunctional T cells at high levels, which gives her hope.
“I really appreciate the need to find a better cure for cancer and how bad this disease is,” said Dr. Bayik. “It has become a huge passion for me.”
Dr. Oriana Teran Pumar, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, will be leading the way in these studies. The focus is on understanding DPP-4 and its role in the function or dysfunction of T cells. Preclinical studies will also test if an alternative treatment strategy can be created by targeting the DPP-4 molecule with an inhibitor commonly used to treat patients with diabetes.
Driven to Cancer Research
At the age of 10, Dr. Bayik’s passion for cancer research began. She had her first encounter with the disease when her beloved dog died. The same illness would take her grandfather from her later in her life. The influence of these losses and the impact of these life-shaping events provided the drive she needed to stay focused on pursuing a career in cancer research, she said.
Dr. Bayik earned a degree in molecular biology and genetics before obtaining her doctoral degree in immunology in 2016 through the National Institutes of Health-Bilkent University Graduate Partnership Program. She moved to Cleveland with her spouse and eventually worked in a cancer research lab, studying brain cancer. Dr. Bayik joined Sylvester as an assistant professor in December 2022 and her work continues to focus on glioblastoma.
Glioblastoma can disguise itself as healthy cells. Knowing this, some of Dr. Bayik’s work has been on its mechanisms of growth or treatment resistance. Last year, she and collaborators from multiple sites shared a discovery that glioblastoma cells recruit mitochondria from neural housekeeping cells called astrocytes. Now she’s looking toward immunotherapy.
“Our immune system should be in a position to recognize and attack cancer cells, but cancers employ multiple mechanisms to escape from the immune system,” stated Dr. Bayik.
Because of the basic biological implications of her research on DPP-4 and immunotherapy, Dr. Bayik’s findings may also help provide answers to other forms of cancer.
While it may take an “army,” along with a no-quit attitude to take down glioblastoma collectively, science will produce answers, she said.
“We have this model: don’t give up, don’t ever give up,” Dr. Bayik stated. “That really hits close to heart for me because we’re not going to give up. We’ll keep working to find the cure for cancer.”
Tags: brain cancer, brain tumors, Dr. Defne Bayik, glioblastoma research, glioblastomas, immunotherapy, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center