COLLABORATING TO FIGHT CANCER

Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and the College of Arts and Sciences are transforming lives by developing novel approaches to preventing and treating cancer.

By University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences By Kyra Gurney

Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine are teaming up with biologists, biophysicists, and chemists at the 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.

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, an associate professor in the departments of biology and physics at the college, Dr. Pantelis Tsoulfas, core director of the Viral Vector Core Facility at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and Ronald Desrosiers, a research professor at the Miller School of Medicine, are the lead researchers on this project.

Luque and his team are 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 this type of cancer. 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—so that the body’s immune system can 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 Luque, whose team includes Michael Cioffi, a postdoctoral researcher, and Imran Noor, a Ph.D. student. “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.”

Antoni Luque Santolaria, left, the principal investigator, poses for a photo in his lab with Michael Cioffi, center, a postdoctoral researcher, and Imran Noor, right, a Ph.D. student. Photo credit: Jenny Abreu/University of Miami

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, causing side effects, 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, one of the lead researchers and an assistant professor in the 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.”

Fuwu Zhang removes organic solvent under vacuum using a rotary evaporator to obtain the desired compound. Photo credit: Jenny Abreu/University of Miami

Zhang and his team are developing a novel delivery system for CRISPR-based therapeutics that hides in a protein called albumin, which is abundant in blood, so that the treatment can safely reach tumor cells.

Zhang is collaborating with Daniel Bilbao Cortes, the director of the Cancer Modeling Shared Resource at Sylvester and a research associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Miller School of Medicine. Bilbao will evaluate the toxicity and efficacy of the new drug delivery system in preclinical cancer models.

Rajeev Prabhakar, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Sandra Rieger, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, also received grants from Catalysts for Cure. They are working with Scott M. Welford, the co-leader of Sylvester’s Tumor Biology Program and professor of radiation oncology at the Miller School, and Dr. Jonathan Schatz, a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology at Sylvester.

Daniel Bilbao checks in with Elizabet Sosa, a histotechnician in his lab, while she sections a patient tumor sample for further analysis. Photo credit: Debora Cabrera/University of Miami

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.

“This kind of support is very important as seeds for these ideas to be tested,” said Bilbao, referring to the Catalysts for Cure funding. “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.”

Dr. C. Ola Landgren, director of the Sylvester Myeloma Institute, co-leader of the Translational and Clinical Oncology Program at Sylvester, and professor of medicine and chief of the Myeloma Division, emphasized the importance of bringing together scientists from different fields. “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.”

Footnotes

Cover photo: Daniel Bilbao retrieves frozen biospecimens from a liquid nitrogen tank. Photo credit: Debora Cabrera/University of Miami

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FootNotes

Cover photo: Daniel Bilbao retrieves frozen biospecimens from a liquid nitrogen tank. Photo credit: Debora Cabrera/University of Miami

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