Khalid Shah
Harvard medical School, USA
Title: Stem cell based therapies for cancer: mechanism and translation into clinics
Biography
Biography: Khalid Shah
Abstract
Stem cell-based therapies are emerging as a promising strategy to tackle cancer. Multiple stem cell types have been shown to exhibit inherent tropism towards tumors. Moreover, when engineered to express therapeutic agents, these pathotropic delivery vehicles can effectively target sites of malignancy. Using our recently established invasive, recurrent and resection models of primary brain tumors (GBM) and breast and melanoma metastatic tumors in the brain that mimic clinical settings, we show that that engineered human mesenchymal stem cells and neural stem cells expressing novel bi-functional proteins or loaded with oncolytic viruses target both the primary and the invasive tumor deposits and have profound anti-tumor effects. These studies demonstrate the strength of employing engineered stem cells and real time imaging of multiple events in preclinical-therapeutic tumor models and form the basis for developing novel cell based therapies for cancer. This presentation considers the current status of stem cell-based treatments for tumors in the brain and provides a rationale for translating the most promising preclinical studies into the clinic.