Collaborating to Fight Cancer
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers are teaming up with University of Miami biologists, biophysicists and chemists to develop new approaches to cancer treatments.
Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, are teaming up with biologists, biophysicists and chemists at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, thanks to a new collaboration between the two entities.
The initiative, Catalysts for Cure: Collaborative Solutions in Transforming Cancer Care, was launched in 2024 to support innovative projects that seek to develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of cancer.
C. Ola Landgren, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine, chief of the Myeloma Division and director of the Myeloma Institute at Sylvester, emphasized the importance of bringing together scientists from different fields in this way.
“Catalysts for Cure leverages expertise across the university to address complex challenges,” he said. “This type of collaboration is critical in the fight against cancer.”
A Vaccine for T-Cell Leukemia/Lymphoma
Among the research projects currently funded by the initiative is an effort to develop a vaccine to protect against the virus that causes adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma. Antoni Luque Santolaria, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UM Departments of Biology and Physics, Pantelis Tsoulfas, M.D., associate professor of neurological surgery at the Miller School and core director of the Viral Vector Core Facility at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and Ronald Desrosiers, Ph.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and vice chair of basic research at the Miller School, are the lead researchers on this project.
The team is combining generative artificial intelligence and biophysics to engineer a new, viral vector delivery platform large enough to fit the genome of the virus that causes adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma. This will enable the development of a vaccine containing a defective version of the virus, which is too big to fit in the current gold standard viral vector delivery platform. That will allow the immune system to learn how to fight it and prevent infections.
“What we’re doing is increasing the platform’s capacity. So, instead of delivering small genes, you can deliver up to five times more,” explained Dr. Luque, who is working closely with Michael Cioffi, a postdoctoral researcher, and Ph.D. student Imran Noor on the project. “The platform that we’re developing could also be applied to therapeutics that are not viral, such as for a cancer that is not related to a virus or for a genetic disease.”
A CRISPR Delivery System for Cancer Treatments
Another project in the cancer research collaboration seeks to develop safe and effective delivery systems for gene-editing cancer treatments known as CRISPR-based therapeutics. These treatments can target and correct genetic mutations that cause tumors to grow and spread. But existing delivery mechanisms can be toxic and are imprecise in delivering the gene-editing tools to the target cells.
“We want to try to develop new materials that can better deliver nucleic acids to our targeted tissues,” explained Fuwu Zhang, Ph.D., one of the lead researchers and an assistant professor in the UM Department of Chemistry. “We want to reduce the toxicity of the carriers and also improve the release of nucleic acids so we can make it much more efficient.”
Dr. Zhang and his team are developing a novel delivery system for CRISPR-based therapeutics that hides in the protein albumin so that the treatment can safely reach tumor cells.
Zhang is collaborating with Daniel Bilbao Cortes, Ph.D., a Miller School research professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and the director of the Cancer Modeling Shared Resource at Sylvester. Dr. Bilbao will evaluate the toxicity and efficacy of the new drug delivery system in preclinical cancer models.
“This kind of support is very important as seeds for these ideas to be tested,” said Dr. Bilbao. “The ability to have these funding opportunities where we can test these high-risk, high-reward ideas to see if there is hope there and then eventually grow them into bigger impact projects is very important.”
Collaboration Across Scientific Disciplines
Rajeev Prabhakar, a professor in the UM Department of Chemistry, and Sandra Rieger, an associate professor in the UM Department of Biology, also received grants from Catalysts for Cure. They are working with Scott Welford, Ph.D., co-leader of the Tumor Biology Program and professor of radiation oncology at the Miller School, and Jonathan Schatz, M.D., professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology at Sylvester.
One of the goals of the initiative is to produce preliminary data that enables the researchers to apply for larger grants from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.
Tags: cancer research, CRISPR gene editing, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Dr. C. Ola Landgren, Dr. Daniel Bilbao Cortes, Dr. Pantelis Tsoulfas, Dr. Ronald Desrosiers, gene editing, hematology, Leukemia, lymphoma, Sylverster Comprehensive Cancer Center, team science