Dr. Jain is a renowned world expert in understanding how changes in the microenvironment that surrounds tumors affect the immune system, drug delivery, treatment efficacy and patient survival. He discovered that an imbalance of vessel growth in tumors results in leaky blood vessels that cause edema, lack of oxygen and immunosuppression.
His current NFCR-supported research focuses on improving CAR-T cell immunotherapy for GBM patients. CAR-T cell therapy targets tumor cells with engineered T cells and has shown dramatic efficacy in blood cancers — but its effects in GBM are limited, presumably due to limited infiltration and function of CAR-T cells within the highly immunosuppressive GBM tumor microenvironment.
Dr. Jain’s preliminary data shows that losartan — a widely prescribed, safe and inexpensive anti-hypertensive drug — can reduce inherent immunosuppression in the GBM tumor microenvironment. He is determining whether losartan can improve the therapeutic efficacy of CAR-T cells in GBM, collaborating with Dr. Mario Suvà, an expert pathologist using single-cell genomic techniques.
Impact
If proven efficacious, these results will directly inform the design of clinical trials testing this novel combination to achieve durable anti-tumor responses in GBM — where patients have very limited options and all previously tested treatment modalities have failed so far.
