Below is a transcript with Osheen Dubey and Nadia Khiabani, CMU Neuroscience research students
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas, and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at a research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Genetic treatments are offering some hope in stopping brain cancer tumors from growing and spreading. Osheen Dubey is working on her doctorate in biochemistry, and in the lab of Eric Peterson, assistant professor in CMU's College of Medicine, she is working on developing a targeted genetic therapy for glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Fellow research student Nadia Khiabani is focused on coming up with a more efficient, safer way to deliver the treatment to where it is needed. They both join me in studio…
Then I gather that the work of both of you is more developing the best way to deliver a form of treatment. And before we sat down to, found out that your work, Nadia, is mainly focused on testing this in mice and yours, Osheen, in cells. What's the main difference between the two and what you're looking at that may be in a different area than Nadia?
Osheen Dubey:
Usually, whenever we are testing something in the lab, the first thing we do is test it in cells, so in vitro, and then we move to like animals. So, when things work really well in cells, then only we actually apply it to animals. Otherwise, there's no point in, you know, if it's not optimized, there's no point in doing it in animals. So, I guess that is the only difference. It's the same cells. The cells are from brain cancer, so they are brain cancer cells. So, they... Yeah, I guess that's like the only difference I can really think of.
DN:
What you learn from the delivery and then how it begins to have an impact. Does it have to have exactly the same set of factors when it's done first with the cells and then with the mice? Or do you expect, is it going to react potentially in a different way?
OD:
It is definitely going to react in a completely differently in cells. There are things that sometimes don't work in cells but work in animals and vice versa. So, Nadia can explain more about the factors that goes into testing it in animals and how we can see if it's working well or not. But yeah, for the cells, you basically start with like optimizing different concentrations of that drug or whatever you're trying to test and then see what works. And then you again, you do the same, follow the exact same protocol for animals as well.
DN:
And what is it, Nadia, then, that you have found when it comes to the application? What impact that this particular treatment is seeming to have on this type of the brain cancer? And is it what you expected to find, or are there differences, positive or negative, as research can sometimes go?
Nadia Khiabani:
So far what I did for the internasal or nose to brain delivery, like we have found that it can successfully cross the blood-brain barrier through like when we inject the animals with the compound through their nose and it can go to the brain like and we have proven this like with our in vivo imaging system and also like with our slicing the after like finishing the project we extract the brains and slice them and we can see that because these compounds are fluorescently labeled like they we can see that fluorescent like glowing but for the parts that it gets delivered but for the parts that it doesn't get there it's like we will not see any fluorescent like reaction. So far, we have seen that on and previously in our lab they did the injection like directly to the brain. So, and they found out that it can be helpful for curing the brain cancer or like any other brain like problems like Huntington's or like Alzheimer's. And so, we are like actually doing the follow up on that to see like which other goods like which are like less invasive can be used for the animals and later on for the humans to treat their brain diseases.
DN:
More from our conversation on this one-two punch for brain cancer and other neurological diseases next time on Central Focus.
