Atique Ahmed
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Glioblastoma is the most common and deadliest brain cancer. Even after surgery, radiation and the chemotherapy drug temozolomide (TMZ), most patients live only 8–10 months, because the tumor almost always comes back.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
- Topics
glioblastoma
brain tumor
temozolomide
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Run a Phase 1/1b trial of mycophenolate mofetil, an IMPDH2-blocking transplant drug, combined with temozolomide and radiation in newly diagnosed glioblastoma, to set the maximum tolerated dose and assess safety.
- Explore progression-free and overall survival in trial patients, and test mycophenolic acid, the active compound MMF produces in the body, as a biomarker of therapy.
- Test whether the ARL13B–IMPDH2 interaction drives glioblastoma cells to switch from recycling purines to making them from scratch, helping them adapt to temozolomide chemotherapy.
- Define how RRM2-driven ribonucleotide reductase activity, which makes DNA building blocks, enhances DNA repair and chemoresistance in patient-derived glioblastoma xenografts.
- Evaluate 3-AP, a blood-brain-barrier-permeable RRM2 inhibitor supplied as clinical-grade drug, as a way to prevent temozolomide resistance and recurrence in glioblastoma models.
- Determine how specific nucleotides made by the RRM2 pathway, such as dCTP and dGTP, promote therapeutic resistance in glioblastoma.
More about the research
It returns because some tumor cells adapt to treatment and become resistant. Both projects ask the same question: how do glioblastoma cells rewire their supply of DNA building blocks to survive chemotherapy, and can blocking that supply line make treatment work better?
Why it matters
Patients with glioblastoma face near-certain recurrence after standard treatment. By targeting how tumor cells make DNA building blocks, this work could yield ways to delay recurrence. One route repurposes an existing transplant drug, mycophenolate mofetil, now entering an early safety trial alongside temozolomide. The other uses a brain-penetrating RRM2 inhibitor, 3-AP. A blood marker could also help monitor the MMF therapy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yvonne Yu-Hsuan Chen
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether bispecific IL-13Rα2/TGF-β CAR-T cells, which target a tumor marker and turn the suppressive signal TGF-β into a stimulant, clear glioblastoma and trigger immunity against tumor cells lacking the marker, in mouse models of mixed tumors.
David Akhavan
University of Kansas, KS·Biomedical Engineering
Develop nanocarriers, tiny drug-carrying particles, that can be loaded into CAR T cells, which are engineered tumor-targeting immune cells, to create a platform for delivering drugs into glioblastoma.
Shiaw-Yih Lin
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether scarce DNA building blocks (dNTPs) cause RNA to be misinserted into TNBC genomes, and whether blocking RNase H2 leaves these errors in place, causing lethal replication stress. Also identify how tumors resist the inhibitor.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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