SBIR Phase I: Epigenetic Remodeling of Natural Killer (NK) Cells for Blood Cancer Therapies

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to produce better alternatives to cancer treatment. The new solution will take advantage of the body’s natural anticancer defense system, an immune cell called a natural killer cell or NK cell. NK cells are able to recognize almost any cancerous cell in the body and can target both solid tumors and blood cancers. This gives NK cells a broad appeal for the treatment of many types of cancer. The team proposes a broad-spectrum cancer treatment by modifying NK cells to be more reactive to cancerous cells in the body. These modified NK cells could potentially be combined with current therapies to enhance their effectiveness, without increasing side-effects in patients. This project has the potential to benefit millions of people, especially in the United States where it is estimated that 40% of individuals will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. This project will use a patented epigenetic modifier to enhance the tumor killing abilities of NK cells. Many immune cell-based therapies rely on altering the genetic code of the cell that will be used to treat disease. However, there are associated risks in altering the genetic code and often the cell therapy may only work on a very specific subtype of cancer. Epigenetic modifiers do not change the underlying DNA sequence but can effectively alter gene expression. Furthermore, NK cells can target a broad-spectrum of cancers but in many cancer patients their tumor killing ability is often suppressed. The research goal is to use the patented epigenetic modifier to increase expression of key NK cells genes that will make them more sensitive to detecting and killing cancer cells. After targeting key genes, NK cells will be assessed for increased tumor killing ability and for how long this ability persists. More specifically, this project seeks to demonstrate that NK cells taken from a healthy donor can be epigenetically altered to enhance their natural function of killing tumor cells. This solution will lay the groundwork to develop a NK cell therapy where NK cells isolated from healthy donors are epigenetically modified to enhance their activity, then delivered to cancer patients to hunt and kill their cancer cells. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.