University of Illinois Cancer Center Tumor Microenvironment Working Group members Zongmin Zhao, PhD, and Ekrem Emrah Er, PhD, are Principal Investigators on a more than $400,000 National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to identify cell engineering methods to target breast cancer brain metastasis. Zhao is the project leader on the two-year NCI grant.
Brain metastasis is a prevalent and deadly condition for patients with metastatic breast cancer currently with no effective pharmacological interventions or cures.
Er’s recent work suggests that Yes Associated Protein (YAP) promotes breast cancer cells’ metastatic growth in the brain through its interaction with TEAD family transcription factors. The use of YAP inhibitors to disrupt YAP-TEAD association can be a promising therapeutic approach for brain metastasis, but its practical utility is hindered by the limited accumulation of these drugs to multi-focal metastatic lesions because of multiple biological barriers such as the blood-brain and blood-tumor-barriers. Zhao is an expert in cellular engineering and his chemical modifications help cell-based therapies overcome biological barriers in target tissues.
Together, Zhao and Er propose to engineer drug-loaded macrophages to target “hard-to-reach” brain metastatic lesions for efficiently disrupting YAP-TEAD interactions in metastatic cells, which can potentially revolutionize how brain metastasis is targeted and pharmacologically treated.
At the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Er is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at University of Illinois College of Medicine, and Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the UIC College of Pharmacy.