A UCF cancer researcher is discovering ways that the body’s own natural killer (NK) cells can be energized to fight deadly pediatric cancers and improve immunotherapy by unleashing the power of our immune system.
UCF Associate Professor of Medicine Alicja Copik has focused her career on developing technologies that “beef up” the body’s NK cells. These cells are the body’s first line of defense in protecting you from viral and other pathogenic infections and even malignancies. Copik’s lab has used nanoparticle technology and genetic engineering to make these cells into better-armed cancer killers.
Her technology is being used to grow NK cells that are in clinical trials for the treatment of adults with leukemia. In recent publications, she has studied if removing one of molecular “brakes” that cancer cells use to avoid being killed—either through antibodies or genetic engineering—can enhance NK cell anti-tumor power.
In initial laboratory testing, this approach is showing strong results in killing neuroblastoma cancer cell lines, the most common cancer in infants. Children with high-risk neuroblastoma have a five-year survival rate of just 50%.
These children must undergo painful treatments that include chemotherapy, antibody therapy and bone marrow transplants—half of which fail.
“We throw everything but the kitchen sink at these kids and still can’t stop the cancer,” says Brian Tullius, a U.S. Navy veteran, former flight surgeon, pediatric cancer specialist at AdventHealth in Orlando and the hospital’s research medical director for pediatric cellular therapy, who is collaborating in Copik’s research.
A video from Copik’s lab shows the dramatic results of her technology. Neuroblastoma tumor cells are labeled red. Energized NK cells, which resemble black dots, are added to the red tumor spheroid and quickly kill the tumor cells, as seen by the loss and dispersion of the red cells.
NK cell therapy holds promise for all cancer patients—but especially children with neuroblastoma—because it comes with very few side effects. And NK cells can be donated by a patient’s family, friends or even complete strangers without the new cells attacking the recipient’s healthy cells, which happens with other stem cell transplants or T cell therapies.
Copik is joined by UCF postdoctoral researcher Tayler Croom Perez in the pediatric cancer study. Croom Perez recently shared the team’s preliminary results with other researchers, physicians and patients at the annual Live Like Bella Pediatric Cancer Research Symposium in South Florida.
Croom Perez received her bachelor’s in forensic science from UCF and completed her doctoral degree at Penn State University. She returned to her alma mater to do NK cell research.
“I have always loved scientific discovery,” Croom Perez says. “Now I have a chance to use my science for translational outcomes that directly affect patient outcomes.”
In the most recent report published by the British Medical Journal, Copik showed that her energized NK cells may improve the performance of cancer immunotherapy treatments that are currently under development. Such treatments work by unleashing the power of our immune system to fight cancer.
More information: Md Faqrul Hasan et al, Knockout of the inhibitory receptor TIGIT enhances the antitumor response of ex vivo expanded NK cells and prevents fratricide with therapeutic Fc-active TIGIT antibodies, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (2023). DOI: 10.1136/jitc-2023-007502
published on Medical Xpress