Miracle makers
Associate professor of medicine Yen-Michael Hsu, an MD, PhD (left), once oversaw a blood bank—blood transfers, dating back to the ancients, are among the oldest known uses of living cells. He says the most exciting part of his role today as director of the Immunologic Monitoring and Cellular Products Laboratory (IMCPL) at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center is working with investigators on the newest ways of making miracles with living cells.
Projects underway in the laboratory’s clean rooms include modifying dendritic immune cells for an HIV vaccine, as well as modifying regulatory dendritic immune cells so patients are better able to accept organ transplants. One of the lab’s most successful achievements, Hsu says, has been developing tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy. (See page 16 story.)
Hsu’s team is also collaborating with ophthalmology colleague Gary Yam, a PhD (center) research associate professor, to prepare corneal stem cells for clinical trials—carrying on research that the late James Funderburgh (right) pioneered in India to treat patients who could no longer see because of corneal scarring. (Tune in to the 2016 Pitt Medcast about it.) Before Funderburgh died in 2019, he invited Yam, who had been studying similar aspects of the cornea in Singapore, to replace him as principal investigator of Pitt’s Corneal Regeneration Laboratory.
Yam is training staff at the IMCPL to spot the different layers of stem cells in the cornea. Their primary cellular experience is in immune cells for oncology therapies. Eye cells are an exciting new challenge for the team, says Hsu.
The idea, Yam says, is to ultimately create a simple paste of restorative stem cells that can be applied to a patient’s eye and fix scarring on the cornea—a feat that would eliminate the need for invasive corneal transplants that only last for a decade or so, while also providing an option for patients in countries where corneal transplants are unavailable.
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