David Akhavan
University of Kansas, KS·Biomedical Engineering
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. Standard treatment is surgery to remove as much of the tumor as is safe, followed by chemotherapy and radiation.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
glioblastoma
brain tumor
CAR T cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Use drug-loaded CAR T cells to counter TGFβ, an immune-suppressing signal in the glioblastoma tumor environment. The aim is to improve tumor killing while avoiding the body-wide toxicity of systemic TGFβ receptor inhibitors.
- Test whether nanocarrier drug-loading widens the therapeutic window of CAR T cells against glioblastoma, the most common malignant adult brain tumor.
More about the research
This treatment extends life but never cures the disease, and fewer than 7% of patients survive five years. This project aims to make an engineered immune-cell therapy work better against these tumors by loading the cells with drugs.
Why it matters
Patients with glioblastoma have few options, and current therapy is not curative. A method to load CAR T cells with drugs could let the cells carry medicines such as TGFβ blockers into the tumor while avoiding side effects elsewhere in the body. This could make cell therapy safer and more effective for brain tumors, and may eventually be applied to other solid cancers.
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.
Mohamad Hamieh
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Test strategies to reduce ICANS, the neurotoxicity of CAR T-cell therapy, by targeting extracellular vesicles released by activated CAR T cells, using animal models that track blood-brain barrier integrity and antitumor activity.
Glenna Foight
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how complexes of bZIP-family transcription factors, proteins that switch genes on or off, regulate T-cell exhaustion, using engineered protein inhibitors that block specific factors.
The school
University of Kansas: 26 labs on PI Pages, $546M a year on research, 351 research doctorates a year.
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