Using CAR-T cell therapy to treat refractory cancers

Degree
Ph.D. candidate, biomedical science

College
Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

Undergraduate Experience
Florida International University

Fun Fact
Lau is “pretty crafty” when it comes to arts and DIY projects

Glycans and Cancer

More than 2 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2025. Some of those patients will experience refractory cancer – cancer that does not respond to initial treatment or becomes resistant during treatment. For some, the uncertainty of it all is as traumatic as the initial diagnosis.

Research assistant and McKnight Fellow Lee Seng Lau and her colleagues in the Dimitroff Lab are working to lessen that burden. Under the direction of Charles J. Dimitroff, a leader in glycobiology, work in the lab focuses on understanding how complex sugars or “glycans” regulate immune and cancer cell functions. Cancer cells learn to evade the body’s immune system attack through adaptive immune resistance.

Lau studies how glycans aid cancer cells in bypassing this response and how it affects current Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy. This therapy uses a patient’s immune cells, genetically engineering them in the lab to express a CAR molecule. Infused back into the patient’s body, the CAR molecules target cancer cells, recognizing and destroying cancerous cells within the body.

But CAR-T cell therapy isn’t without its issues. Lau is using her understanding of sugars to modify and improve the effectiveness of this therapy by extending the cells’ persistence and reducing severe side effects. Promising results have been experienced thus far in a collaboration with Baptist Hospital’s Dr. Manmeet Ahluwalia and Dr. Guenther Koehne.