Podcast appearances and mentions of wendell lim

Doctors may soon be able to cure more cancers with immunotherapy, thanks to new technologies to fight malignant tumors. Wendell Lim, a molecular scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has designed smart immune T-cells that he says now more than ever have a better chance to defeat the disease. "That’s where I think this idea that we really have to attack the problem from two sides. We really have to provide T-cells that can effectively recognize and kill the cancers, as well as ways to counteract immunosuppression." Immunotherapy has shown some success in treating melanoma and lung cancers, but solid tumors - the majority of cancers – are still a challenge. “The immune system has this kind of potential. I'm pretty optimistic that our understanding and the tools that we have in immunotherapy are just really accelerating at a dramatic pace." The Food and Drug Administration may approve first therapies with engineered T-cells as early as this year.

Immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment. Wendell Lim, a molecular scientist of the University of California, San Francisco, says he is very optimistic about its success, but the caveat is - the cure comes at a price. "Currently the therapies use patient's own T cells and modify those. And what's good about that is you won't get an immune reaction against those T cells because they come from you. But that's highly customized and that's part of what makes therapy more expensive." Researchers are looking for ways to make the therapy more affordable so everyone who needs it could pay for it. "One of the things that people in the field are working on hard is to develop more off-the-shelf cells – that you might have a cell that comes from either a universal donor, or has been generated from stem cells that is compatible with a certain patient, just the way that an organ would be matched". Lim hopes more funds to tackle this cost savings will be available through the Moonshot Initiative, a project that Vice President Joseph Biden spearheaded to accelerate cancer research.

Smarter T-cells that can effectively fight cancer may be the key to successful immunotherapy. Molecular scientist Wendell Lim of the University of California, San Francisco, has engineered synthetic receptors, called syn-Notch receptors, that can not only recognize tumors, but also produce molecules that can suppress cancerous microenvironments in the body. "The syn-Notch receptors are kind of a universal sensing platform that allows us to program the T-cells with many kinds of input/output responses. So it really allows us to treat the T-cell much like the way you would program a robot that can sense whether there are obstacles in front of it." Lim says scientists are testing these highly efficient multi-pronged T-cells in labs, but they may be available for patients within the next couple of years. "I think we can really transform what cancer therapy is like." Lim also hopes that smart T-cells will target cancers that can’t currently be treated with immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy can be effective in fighting cancer, but the immune system's killer T-cells sometimes make mistakes and attack normal cells instead. Wendell Lim, a molecular scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, believes he can change this by engineering T-cells. "One of the things that has been a challenge is how we increase the precision of the cell that they are better at recognizing cancer cells and discriminating them from normal cells. We have successfully programmed the T-cells like robots that can search the body and then deliver various payloads there. So it is like a smart weapon for combatting cancer. " In fact, Lim says, in just a couple of years the Food and Drug Administration might approve the engineered cells as a therapy to battle cancer. So, the scientists have geared up and are actively testing the technology now in labs. "I think we can transform what cancer therapy is like. Some of these immune therapies really might give much longer extensions of life."

One of the most important developments in science in the last couple of years has been engineering immune cells to fight cancer. But so far, the technique has not always been successful. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are now trying to increase the power of immune white blood cells – called T-cells - to kill tumors. Molecular scientist Wendell Lim may have found a way. "What we have been developing is a new ways of programming t-cells so we can actually flexibly change their behavior." Lim says to achieve this, they have created microscopic robots that can move through the body and are now teaching them how to find cancer. "We have developed a new type of sensor molecule called synthetic notch receptor that we can put in these T-cells and their receptors can be programed to recognize molecules that are unique to cancer." The future of these molecules could not only help fight tumors, but also combat autoimmune diseases and other physical or mental disorders.

How understanding neural control of appetite might help fight obesity, with Tamas Horvath (0:00) Trends in Neurosciences. How elemental design principles can provide insight into biological processing, with Wendell Lim (8:42) Molecular Cell. Plus, sample a selection of the hottest new papers from Cell Press (16:12).