Penn Bioengineering Celebrates the Art in  Engineering

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, the department has acquired several pieces of artwork that celebrate the beauty of biological forms. The pieces were curated by Nicole Lampl, Director/Curator of the Reeves House Visual Arts Center.

Read a message from Department Chair Dr. Ravi Radhakrishnan: “Penn Bioengineering: The Past, Present and Future

Vertex (2019)

Artist: Betty Busby

Fiber, 66″ W x 56″ H

Created with a limited palette on artist dyed silk and hemp, Vertex makes a strong impression of motion in the branching imagery derived from fractals.

“I went to the fractal show at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science’s planetarium, and it blew my mind,” says Busby. “They go from a picture of the galaxy down to a picture of an atom, and you see the same image repeated again and again.” The artist’s focus on macro imagery is the product of her lifelong fascination with molecular biology. Constantly exploring new materials and techniques from around the world, Busby has purchased batiks from Bali, dupioni from India, and silk from China that she paints and dyes with acid. The artist sees the variety of materials that she used in her mixed media works as a direct reflection of the incredible diversity found among living things.

About Betty Busby: After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in ceramics, Betty Busby founded a custom ceramic tile manufacturing firm in Los Angeles. After nearly 20 years of running the firm, she sold the business in 1994 (it is still in operation to this day). Upon relocating to New Mexico, she changed the focus of her artwork to fiber, taking it full time in 2004. Her manufacturing background has lead to constant experimentation with new materials and techniques that fuel her work. Originally inspired by Amish quilts at the Kutztown County Fair near her childhood home in Pennsylvania, her work has made the journey from bed quilts to mixed media sculpture, and is constantly evolving and heading in new directions.

Artist Statement: Betty Busby creates fiber art using technological innovations and unconventional materials to create work with inviting textures. She is often inspired by the macro world, exploring the structures and forms of nature. She uses these images as jumping off points to create abstractions, which become ground-breaking works of art. Betty Busby creates fiber art using technological innovations and unconventional materials to create work with inviting texture. But the voice of textile roots is strong with traditional fabric, paints and dyes, needle and thread and her trusty Singer working alongside her iPad and spun bonded nonwoven fibers.

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Colony Biofilm (2023)

Artist: Scott Chimileski

Photography mounted on board, 24″ W x 16″ H

The most harmful species of microbes build biofilms and swarm together. When the conditions are right, the Pseudomonas Aeruginosa (pictured here), can shift from a harmless bacterium found in many environments to a pathogen that causes infection in burn wounds.

About Scott Chimileski: Scott Chimileski a microbiologist, imaging specialist, and educator based in Woods Hole, MA, where he is a Research Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). From 2015 to 2019, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Kolter Lab within the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. During that time, Roberto Kolter and Chimileski curated the exhibition Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge of Sight, open at the Harvard Museum of Natural History from February 2018 through March 2022. They also coauthored Life at the Edge of Sight: A Photographic Exploration of the Microbial World, published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Chimileski’s imagery has been published or broadcast by media outlets including National Geographic, WIRED, TIME, The Atlantic, STAT, Fast Company, NPR, The Scientist, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, The Biologist, HHMI Biointeractive, Tangled Bank Studios, Quanta Magazine, the NIH Director’s Blog, WBUR Boston, The Verge, TED Talks, and CBS Sunday Morning. Exhibitions at public venues across the United States, and in Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Scotland, the UK, and Denmark have featured his imagery and scientific interpretation. Chimileski received a Passion in Science Award in Arts & Creativity from New England Biolabs in 2016, and FASEB BioArt awards in 2016, 2017, and 2019.

Artist Statement: Chimileski’s original scientific photography specializes in high resolution macrophotography and time lapse imaging of microbial colonies and behaviors. This collection includes photos captured at sites around the world where exceptional natural microbial forms flourish, such as Yellowstone National Park. Most bacterial and archaeal cells are far too small to see with the naked eye. However, microbes are seldom if ever found in isolation. Rather, the biology of the microbial world is underpinned by the tremendous interactivity, sociality and modularity of individual cells, which often coalesce in great numbers to produce macroscopically visible structures, including biofilms, microbial mats, colonies, swarms and fruiting bodies. Chimileski is focused on the development of macroscopic imaging techniques as well as time-lapse photography and three-dimensional scanning technologies as applied to microbial multicellular forms, collective behaviors, communities and interspecies interactions. He is also interested in leveraging the power of photography as a medium for communicating microbiology to other scientists and to the general public.

Amoeba Hex Pod (2018), Amoeba (2013) and Amoeba Coffin (2013)

Artist: Melissa Bolger

Gouache, ink, and graphite on clayboard, 6″ W x 6″ H x 2″ D

Bolger explores Synthetic Biology and the myriad ways in which it can imbue engineered organisms with new abilities. Redesigned and entirely imagined cellular structures coexist and intermingle as the artist investigates an unseen universe. Through her visual exploration of this scientific field, the artist invites us to ponder what the consequences of replicating nature on a cellular level might have on human evolution.

About Melissa Bolger: Melissa Bolger is a California native and was raised outside of Redding, CA where her parents settled on a remote piece of property, built a house, and raised their family off the grid. her mother sewed the family’s clothes and other household items. For Bolger, the woods were her playground and she grew up hiking, fishing, hunting, riding horses and panning for gold. Some of her early artistic influences grew from those days, living off a dirt road overlooking a canyon and creek, when do-it-yourself was the only way to get things done. Today, she merges the techniques of craft with fine art in her interpretative portraits, recycled materials, paintings and drawings. Melissa Bolger’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows and her work has been reviewed in publications.

Artist Statement: The “Soft Machines” series explores themes of patterns within nature through the intricate application of pen and ink, gouache, and graphite. Her interest is on cellular structures that are manipulated by synthetic and artificial life. Borrowing from nature and science, microscopic shapes and images are drawn and high-key colors painted that float, hover, and drip in visual metaphors that insinuate synthetic manipulation. Patterns of nature are complex on a nanoscale and certain thoughts arise. What would be the consequences of science’s attempt to replicate nature on a cellular level? How far will synthetic operations continue in human history? What effects will they have on evolution? The manipulation of nature at the nanoscopic level is overwhelming, mind-blowing and psychedelic. While this manipulation has the potential to alter human life in numerous uncharted ways the question of how and what form life will survive in a synthetic and artificial way is mysterious, puzzling and hi-tech. Approaching these themes with curiosity and instinct, exploring and documenting the natural and the unnatural together and maintaining a sense of wonderment is the embodiment of “Soft Machines.” Examining the intricacies of the invisible world give birth to patterns that move like a heartbeat, live and survive against all odds. “Soft Machines” is the beginning of a series of work exploring, investigating and examining particular themes around astrobiology, synthetic cellular and molecular reconstruction. Bolger continues to explore themes of patterns within nature on a nanoscopic scale in her intricate application of pen and ink, gouache, graphite and mixed media. The invisible world under a microscope is a fascinating phenomenon that Bolger uses as a stepping point into inner realms of space that move, float, and drip. Whether it be an alien landscape or intricate organic patterns, the diversity of life on the planet is an essential force and fascination within the work.

Links:

Betty Busby:
Website: bbusbyarts.com
Instagram: @bbusbyarts

Scott Chimileski:
Website: scottchimileskiphotography.com/
Instagram: @socialmicrobes

Melissa Bolger:
Website: melissalouisebolger.com
Instagram: @melissalouisebolger

Nicole Lampl
Website: nicolelampl.crevado.com
Instagram: @thecuriouscurator_nicole
Email: njlampl@gmail.com
Phone: 504-428-8589

What Makes a Breakthrough? “Eight Steps Back” Before Making it to the Finish Lit

by Meagan Raeke

(From left to right) Breakthrough Prize recipients Drew Weissman, Virginia M-Y Lee, Katalin Karikó, and Carl June at a reception on Feb. 13. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine News)

In popular culture, scientific discovery is often portrayed in “Eureka!” moments of sudden realization: a lightbulb moment, coming sometimes by accident. But in real life—and in Penn Medicine’s rich history as a scientific innovator for more than 250 years—scientific breakthroughs can never truly be distilled down to a single, “ah-ha” moment. They’re the result of years of hard work, perseverance, and determination to keep going, despite repeated, often discouraging, barriers and setbacks. 

“Research is [like taking], four, or six, or eight steps back, and then a little stumble forward,” said Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research. “You keep doing that over and over and somehow, rarely, you can get to the top of the step.” 

For Weissman and his research partner, Katalin Karikó, PhD, an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery, that persistence—documented in thousands of news stories across the globe—led to the mRNA technology that enabled two lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, earning the duo numerous accolades, including the highest scientific honor, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Weissman and Karikó were also the 2022 recipients of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the world’s largest science awards, popularly known as the “Oscars of Science.” Founded in 2012 by a group of web and tech luminaries including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Breakthrough Prizes recognize “the world’s top scientists working in the fundamental sciences—the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations.” With six total winners, including four from the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM), Penn stands alongside Harvard and MIT as the institutions whose researchers have been honored with the most Breakthrough Prizes. 

Virginia M.Y. Lee, PhD, the John H. Ware 3rd Professor in Alzheimer’s Research, was awarded the Prize in 2020 for discovering how different forms of misfolded proteins can move from cell to cell and lead to neurodegenerative disease progression. Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, is the most recent recipient and will be recognized at a star-studded red-carpet event in April for pioneering the development of CAR T cell therapy, which programs patients’ own immune cells to fight their cancer.

The four PSOM Breakthrough Prize recipients were honored on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024, when a new large-scale installation was unveiled in the lobby of the Biomedical Research Building to celebrate each laurate and their life-changing discoveries. During a light-hearted panel discussion, the honorees shared how a clear purpose, dogged determination, and a good sense of humor enabled their momentum forward. 

Read the full story in Penn Medicine News.

Carl June and Jon Epstein are members of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group. Read more stories featuring them in the BE Blog here and here, respectively.

Weissman presented the Department of Bioengineering’s 2022 Herman P. Schwan Distinguished Lecture: “Nucleoside-modified mRNA-LNP therapeutics.” Read more stories featuring Weissman in the BE Blog here.

Penn Bioengineering Cockroach Lab Featured in Popular Mechanics

Every Penn Bioengineering semester culminates in a series of “demo days” — dedicated time in which undergraduate Bioengineering students demonstrate projects made in their Bioengineering lab courses or in Senior Design for their classmates and faculty. These are held in the George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace (or the Penn BE Labs), the dedicated teaching lab for the Bioengineering Department which also functions as an interdisciplinary bio-makerspace open to the entire Penn community.

For the Fall 2023 demos, Popular Mechanics paid a visit to the BE Labs to witness the (in)famous “cockroach lab,” a staple of the third year course “Bioengineering, Modeling, Analysis, and Design Laboratory” (affectionately known as BE MAD). This year’s cockroach demos featured a miniature Taylor Swift — flaunting a cockroach limb — and several projects featuring the faces of course faculty, David Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor in Bioengineering and Senior Associate Dean in Penn Engineering, and Michael Patterson, Director of Educational Laboratories in Bioengineering.

Read “How Severed Cockroach Legs Could Help Us ‘Fully Rebuild’ Human Bodies” in Popular Mechanics.

Read more stories featuring the Penn BE Labs in the BE Blog here.

Secondary Cancers Following CAR T Cell Therapy Are Rare, Penn Medicine Analysis Shows

by Meagan Raeke

3d illustration of a damaged and disintegrating cancer cell. (Image: iStock/vitanovski)

The development of any type of second cancer following CAR T cell therapy is a rare occurrence, as found in an analysis of more than 400 patients treated at Penn Medicine, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported today in Nature Medicine. The team also described a single case of an incidental T cell lymphoma that did not express the CAR gene and was found in the lymph node of a patient who developed a secondary lung tumor following CAR T cell therapy.

CAR T cell therapy, a personalized form of immunotherapy in which each patient’s T cells are modified to target and kill their cancer cells, was pioneered at Penn. More than 30,000 patients with blood cancers in the United States—many of whom had few, if any, remaining treatment options available—have been treated with CAR T cell therapy since the first such therapy was approved in 2017. Some of the earliest patients treated in clinical trials have gone on to experience long-lasting remissions of a decade or more.

Secondary cancers, including T cell lymphomas, are a known, rare risk of several types of cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation, and stem cell transplant. CAR T cell therapy is currently only approved to treat blood cancers that have relapsed or stopped responding to treatment, so patients who receive CAR T cell therapies have already received multiple other types of treatment and are facing dire prognoses.

In November 2023, the FDA announced an investigation into several reported cases of secondary T cell malignancies, including CAR-positive lymphoma, in patients who previously received CAR T cell therapy products. In January 2024, the FDA began requiring drugmakers to add a safety label warning to CAR T cell products. While the FDA review is still ongoing, it remains unclear whether the secondary T cell malignancies were caused by CAR T cell therapy.

As a leader in CAR T cell therapy, Penn has longstanding, clearly established protocols to monitor each patient both during and after treatment – including follow-up for 15 years after infusion – and participates in national reporting requirements and databases that track outcomes data from all cell therapy and bone marrow transplants.

Marco Ruella, M.D.

“When this case was identified, we did a detailed analysis and concluded the T cell lymphoma was not related to the CAR T cell therapy. As the news of other cases came to light, we knew we should go deeper, to comb through our own data to better understand and help define the risk of any type of secondary cancer in patients who have received CAR T cell products,” said senior author Marco Ruella, MD, an assistant professor of Hematology-Oncology and Scientific Director of the Lymphoma Program. “What we found was very encouraging and reinforces the overall safety profile for this type of personalized cell therapy.”

Read the full story in Penn Medicine News.

Marco Ruella is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine. He is a member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group.

Protein Partners Identified as Potential Key for Fetal Bone Development

Image: iStock/Christoph Burgstedt

A pair of proteins, YAP and TAZ, has been identified as conductors of bone development in the womb and could provide insight into genetic diseases such as osteogenesis imperfecta, known commonly as “brittle bone disease.” This research, published in Developmental Cell and led by members of the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory of the Perelman School of Medicine, adds understanding to the field of mechanobiology, which studies how mechanical forces influence biology.

“Despite more than a century of study on the mechanobiology of bone development, the cellular and molecular basis largely has remained a mystery,” says the study’s senior author, Joel Boerckel, an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery. “Here, we identify a new population of cells that are key to turning the body’s early cartilage template into bone, guided by the force-activated gene regulating proteins, YAP and TAZ.”

Read the full story in Penn Medicine News.

Joel D. Boerckel is Associate Professor in Orthopaedic Surgery and in Bioengineering.

Riccardo Gottardi Receives BMES Rising Star Award

Riccardo Gottardi, Ph.D.

Riccardo Gottardi, Assistant Professor in Pediatrics and in Bioengineering and leader of the Bioengineering and Biomaterials Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), received the Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society-Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (BMES-CMBE). The Rising Star Award recognizes a BMES-CMBE member who is at the early independent career stage and has made an outstanding impact on the field of cellular and molecular bioengineering. Awardees will give an oral presentation on their research at the BMES-CMBE conference in Puerto Rico in January and be recognized at the conference Gala dinner.

Dr. Gottardi’s research focuses on engineering solutions for pediatric health, primarily for airway disorders. He has previously received awards for work to create a biomaterial patch to repair the tympanic membrane and for work to develop cartilage implants to treat severe subglottic stenosis. He received grant support from the National Institutes of Health to further his work in subglottic stenosis.

This story originally appeared in the CHOP Cornerstone Blog.

The Immune Health Future, Today

by Christina Hernandez Sherwood

Breaking the code of the immune system could provide a new fundamental way of understanding, treating, and preventing every type of disease. Penn Medicine is investing in key discoveries about immunity and immune system function, and building infrastructure, to make that bold idea a reality.

Several members of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group feature in this story which originally featured in the Penn Medicine Magazine.

Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine Magazine

This grandfather lives with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disorder that he controls with a medicine that depletes his body of the type of immune cells that make antibodies. So while he has completed his COVID-19 vaccine course, his immune system function isn’t very strong—and the invitation has arrived at a time when COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly. 

You can imagine the scene as an older gentleman lifts a thick, creamy envelope from his mailbox, seeing his own name written in richly scripted lettering. He beams with pride and gratitude at the sight of his granddaughter’s wedding invitation. Yet his next thought is a sober and serious one. Would he be taking his life in his hands by attending the ceremony?

“In the past, all we could do was [measure] the antibody response,” says Amit Bar-Or, the Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Professor in Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine, and chief of the Multiple Sclerosis division. “If that person didn’t have a good antibody response, which is likely because of the treatment they’re on, we’d shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t go because we don’t know if you’re protected.’” 

Today, though, Bar-Or can take a deeper dive into his patients’ individual immune systems to give them far more nuanced recommendations. A clinical test for immune cells produced in response to the COVID-19 vaccine or to the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself—not just antibodies—was one of the first applied clinical initiatives of a major new Immune Health® project at Penn Medicine. Doctors were able to order this test and receive actionable answers through the Penn Medicine electronic health record for patients like the grandfather with MS. 

“With a simple test and an algorithm we can have a very different discussion,” Bar-Or says. A test result showing low T cells, for instance, would tell Bar-Or his patient may get a meaningful jolt in immunity from a vaccine booster, while low antibody levels would suggest passive antibody therapy is more helpful. Or, the test might show his body is already well primed to protect him, making it reasonably safe to attend the wedding.

This COVID-19 immunity test is only the beginning. 

Physicians and scientists at Penn Medicine are imagining a future where patients can get a precise picture of their immune systems’ activity to guide treatment decisions. They are working to bring the idea of Immune Health to life as a new area of medicine. In labs, in complex data models, and in the clinic, they are beginning to make sense out of the depth and breadth of the immune system’s millions of as-yet-undeciphered signals to improve health and treat illnesses of all types. 

Penn Medicine registered the trademark for the term “Immune Health” in recognition of the potential impact of this research area and its likelihood to draw non-academic partners as collaborators in its growth. Today, at the south end of Penn’s medical campus, seven stories of research space are being added atop an office building at 3600 Civic Center Blvd., including three floors dedicated to Immune Health, autoimmunity, and immunology research.

The concept behind the whole project, says E. John Wherry, director of Penn Medicine’s Institute for Immunology and Immune Health (I3H), “is to listen to the immune system, to profile the immune system, and use those individual patient immune fingerprints to diagnose and treat diseases as diverse as immune-related diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, and many others.”

The challenge is vast. Each person’s immune system is far more complex than antibodies and T cells alone. The immune system is made of multiple interwoven layers of complex defenders—from our skin and mucous membranes to microscopic memory B cells that never forget a childhood infection—meant to fortify our bodies from germs and disease. It is a sophisticated system that learns and adapts over our lifetimes in numerous ways, and it also falters and fails in some ways we understand and others that remain mysterious. And each person’s intricate internal battlefield is in some way unique.

The immune system is not just a set of defensive barricades, either. It’s also a potential source of deep insight about a person’s physiological functioning and responses to medical treatments.

“The immune system is sensing and keeping track of basically all tissues and all cells in our body all the time,” Wherry says. “It is surveying the body trying to clean up any invaders and restore homeostasis by maintaining good health.”

“Our goal is to essentially break the code of the immune system,” says Jonathan Epstein, executive vice dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and chief scientific officer at Penn Medicine. “By doing so, we believe we will be able to determine your state of health and your response to therapies in essentially every human disease.”

Read the full story in Penn Today.

Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Real Biological Advances—Meet César de la Fuente

by Eric Horvath

In an era peppered by breathless discussions about artificial intelligence—pro and con—it makes sense to feel uncertain, or at least want to slow down and get a better grasp of where this is all headed. Trusting machines to do things typically reserved for humans is a little fantastical, historically reserved for science fiction rather than science. 

Not so much for César de la Fuente, PhD, the Presidential Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Microbiology, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Bioengineering in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science. Driven by his transdisciplinary background, de la Fuente leads the Machine Biology Group at Penn: aimed at harnessing machines to drive biological and medical advances. 

A newly minted National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine (ELHM) Scholar, among earning a host of other awards and honors (over 60), de la Fuente can sound almost diplomatic when describing the intersection of humanity, machines and medicine where he has made his way—ensuring multiple functions work together in harmony. 

“Biology is complexity, right? You need chemistry, you need mathematics, physics and computer science, and principles and concepts from all these different areas, to try to begin to understand the complexity of biology,” he said. “That’s how I became a scientist.”

Read the full story in Penn Medicine News.

Sonura Named Among 2023 PHL Inno Under 25 Honorees

Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce

A team of recent Penn Bioengineering graduates have been included in list of prominent young Philadelphia innovators as chosen by The Philadelphia Business Journal and PHL Inno.

Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce founded Sonura as their Senior Design Project in Bioengineering. The team, who all graduated in 2023, picked up a competitive President’s Innovation Prize for their beanie that promotes the cognitive and socioemotional development of newborns in the NICU by protecting them from the auditory hazards of their environments while fostering parental connection. Now, they have been included in the list of fourteen Inno Under 25 honorees for 2023.

“To determine this year’s list, the Philadelphia Business Journal and PHL Inno sought nominations from the public and considered candidates put forth by our editorial team. To be considered, nominees must be 25 years of age or younger and work for a company based in Greater Philadelphia and/or reside in the region.

Honorees span a wide range of industries, including consumer goods, biotechnology and environmental solutions. Many are products of the region’s colleges and universities, though some studied farther afield before setting up shop locally.”

Read “Announcing the 2023 PHL Inno Under 25 honorees” and “Inno Under 25” in PHL Inno. Penn affiliates can subscribe through Penn’s library services.

Carl June on the Boundless Potential of CAR T Cell Therapy

by Meagan Raeke

Carl June, at the flash mob celebration of the FDA approval of the CAR T cell therapy he developed, in August 2017. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine Magazine)

For most of modern medicine, cancer drugs have been developed the same way: by designing molecules to treat diseased cells. With the advent of immunotherapy, that changed. For the first time, scientists engineered patients’ own immune systems to recognize and attack diseased cells.

One of the best examples of this pioneering type of medicine is CAR T cell therapy. Invented in the Perelman School of Medicine by Carl June, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, CAR T cell therapy works by collecting T cells from a patient, modifying those cells in the lab so that they are designed to destroy cancerous cells, and reinfusing them into the patient. June’s research led to the first FDA approval for this type of therapy, in 2017. Six different CAR T cell therapies are now approved to treat various types of blood cancers. Carl June, at the flash mob celebration of the FDA approval of the CAR T cell therapy he developed, in August 2017. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine Magazine)

CAR T cell therapy holds the potential to help millions more patients—if it can be successfully translated to other conditions. June and colleagues, including Daniel Baker, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Cell and Molecular Biology department, discuss this potential in a perspective published in Nature.

In the piece, June and Baker highlight other diseases that CAR T cell therapy could be effective.

“CAR T cell therapy has been remarkably successful for blood cancers like leukemias and lymphomas. There’s a lot of work happening here at Penn and elsewhere to push it to other blood cancers and to earlier stage disease, so patients don’t have to go through chemo first,” June says. “Another big priority is patients with solid tumors because they make up the vast majority of cancer patients. Beyond cancer, we’re seeing early signs that CAR T cell therapy could work in autoimmune diseases, like lupus.”

As for which diseases to pursue as for possible future treatment, June says, “essentially it boils down to two questions: Can we identify a population of cells that are bad? And can we target them specifically? Whether that’s asthma or chronic diseases or lupus, if you can find a bad population of cells and get rid of them, then CAR T cells could be therapeutic in that context.”

“What’s exciting is it’s not just theoretical at this point. There have been clinical reports in other autoimmune diseases, including myasthenia gravis and inflammatory myopathy,” Baker says. “But we are seeing early evidence that CAR T cell therapy will be successful beyond cancer. And it’s really opening the minds of people in the field to think about how else we could use CAR T. For example, there’s some pioneering work at Penn from the Epstein lab for heart failure. The idea is that you could use CAR T cells to get rid of fibrotic tissue after a cardiac injury, and potentially restore the damage following a heart attack.”

Baker adds, “there’s no question that over the last decade, CAR T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer. I’m hoping to play a role in bringing these next generation therapies to patients and make a real impact over the next decade. I think there’s potential for cell therapy to be a new pillar of medicine at large, and not just a new pillar of oncology.”

Read the full story at Penn Medicine Today.