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Keywords: Seed grant, funding, glioblastoma, treatment, biochemistry
Samy Meroueh, a Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) member and professor of biochemistry, received a CCIL Seed Grant to bring to life the innovative project, “Targeting Macrophage Trem2 with AAVs using uPAR as a Homing Target for Glioblastoma Gene Therapy.” Seed grants provide funding that enables faculty teams to develop cancer research ideas, collect preliminary data and attract external funding.
The objective of this research is to use AAVs—a small, non-pathogenic viral vectors commonly used for gene delivery—to deliver a gene to immune cells in brain tumors to enhance the ability to kill tumor cells by targeting tumor-associated macrophages, which are a type of immune cell that can either suppress or support tumor growth depending on their active or inactive state. The gene being targeted in this research is Trem2.
Meroueh’s research employs the unique strategy to coat viral particles (AAVs) with a unique drug that enables particles to go directly to the brain tumor. “The drug that we have developed binds to a cell surface receptor known as uPAR, which is highly expressed in tumour macroenvironment including macrophages,” said Meroueh.
This project is a collaboration between the Meroueh Lab in Biochemistry, the Thomas Gaj Lab in Bioengineering, and the Timothy Fan Lab in Veterinary Clinical Medicine. “Our collaboration features Thomas Gaj, who specializes in AAV research, and Tim Fan’s expertise in tumor biology,” mentioned Meroueh. “If successful, this technology could advance to clinical trials within a few years. I am very thankful to CCIL for making this project possible.”
This project aims to benefit pediatric and adult glioblastoma patients. However, Meroueh noted the potential for this research to also benefit patients with other solid tumors such as triple negative breast cancer or pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas.
Editor’s notes:
Samy Meroueh is a Professor of Biochemistry and a member of the Cancer Center at Illinois. He can be reached at smeroueh@illinois.edu.
This story was written by Javeria Malik, CCIL Communications intern.