Researchers Eliminate Lung Cancer in Mice

Learn how researchers from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine are combining cytokine 'drug factory' implants and a checkpoint inhibitor drug to eradicate advanced-stage mesothelioma in mice.

“It’s very hard to treat mesothelioma tumors in mice, like it is in human beings,” says Bryan Burt  , professor and chief of the thoracic surgery division at Baylor University. “And what our data show is that delivery of these immunotherapy particles, regionally, to these mice who have mesothelioma, has very provocative and very effective treatment responses. In fact, I’ve not seen these mesothelioma tumors in mice be eradicated, with such efficacy, as we have in this mouse model.”

Transcript

00:00:01 [Music] for several years now my lab has been focused on making cytokine factories for the treatment of cancer from the beginning our objective was to develop a platform therapy that could be used for multiple different types of immune system disorders or or different types of cancers earlier this year we published a manuscript which

00:00:23 highlighted our pre-clinical data on ovarian cancer and we were able to demonstrate that the cytokine factories that are comprised of engineered cells that secrete the drug interleukin-2 administered to the peritoneal cavity could eradicate ovarian cancer tumors so we don't waste any of the il2 on the way to getting to through this like the blood circulation to the tumor

00:00:50 we just put it in the same cavity we have a spin out company avenged bio that's licensed this technology and they've had meetings with the fda and the fda has actually cleared the clinical trials so in the next couple of months we'll be dosing ovarian cancer patients with these il2 cytokine factories this research

00:01:16 attracted the attention of some of our collaborators across the street at baylor in particular there's a team of cardiothoracic surgeons that specialize in the treatment of lung cancers and mesothelioma brian burt and robbie ganta they approached us and they were really impressed by the preclinical data we had ovarian cancer and they asked the question could we actually leverage this

00:01:40 same system for mesothelioma i take care of patients who have malignant pleural mesothelioma this is a very aggressive malignancy of the lining of the lungs and it's very hard to treat completely by surgical resection in other words there is often residual disease that is left behind the treatment of this residual disease with

00:02:02 local immunotherapy so in other words local delivery of relatively high doses of immunotherapy to that pleural space is a very attractive way to treat this disease we've been able to demonstrate efficacy in a number of animal models of different types of cancers ovarian colorectal and now in this study we

00:02:24 highlight the potential for this therapy in treating mesothelioma cancers as well as other lung cancers it's very hard to treat even this tumor and mice like it is in human beings and what our data show is that delivery of these immunotherapy particles regionally to these mice who have mesothelioma has

00:02:47 very provocative and very effective treatment responses in fact i've not seen these mesothelioma tumors and might be eradicated with such efficacy as we have in this mouse model being here at rice university across the street from the largest medical center in the world where we regularly interface with

00:03:06 clinicians and we get that feedback in terms of well what does the patient need how do we administer it how do we do this safely you know if this product had this profile would you as a clinician give this to your patients and those considerations early in the design of a therapeutic is critical and the environment here is

00:03:29 really supportive of that which is very unique so we're excited about the potential these approaches are having already and that the ecosystem and the innovation pipeline that we've established which allows you know students to come here think about big ideas students that are passionate and motivated and they want

00:03:52 to have an impact they can come here and benefit from that and hopefully have a change in terms of therapeutics that they can develop as well [Music]