Taming Liver Cancer with Edited-Macrophage Therapy

Authors

Sumit Saha, Virginia Commonwealth University

Original Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Presentation

Comments

Second place winner of the 11th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 3, 2025.

Abstract

Liver cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with an estimated 1.3 million annual deaths projected by 2040. Current immunotherapies often fall short, as tumors can manipulate immune cells to protect rather than attack them. Sumit Saha’s research focuses on reprogramming these immune cells—specifically macrophages—to resist tumor deception. By deleting a novel drug target, sphingosine kinase 2, his team transformed macrophages from tumor-defending to tumor-fighting cells, enhancing anti-tumor immunity and significantly reducing tumor numbers in animal models. This edited-macrophage therapy offers a promising new approach to restoring the immune system’s natural defense and potentially reducing liver cancer mortality in the future.

Transcription

Next, we have Sumit Saha, Taming Liver Cancer with Edited-Macrophage Therapy. They're in the School of Medicine, and their advisor is Dr. Chris Green. Last year, September, I was at the VCU hospital struggling with fatty liver disorder, and I'm still undergoing recovery. But not every patient with such chronic liver disorders are fortunate enough to avoid the high associated risk of liver cancer complications. Globally, liver cancer has been ranked as the third topmost cancer-related death reason. And by 2040, it has been predicted that 1.3 million new deaths will be happening just due to liver cancer annually. That is an alarming number. Now, recent FDA-approved treatments for liver cancer mostly focus on modulating the immune system of the body to attack the tumor. But they're not always very effective. Thus, there is an unmet need for discovering new drug target and therapies, and my research caters to that very need. Now let us imagine the immune system of our body to be an army of soldiers, patrolling the body, encountering foreign threats, attacking them. That's how it keeps us healthy. Sounds simple, right? But what if some of these immune soldiers are signaled by the foreign threat to defend enemy territory making them believe that they are all on the same side that's exactly how cancer walks when there is a tumor in the liver the immune soldiers invade and attack the tumor but as cancer progresses some of these immune soldiers on the first line of defense called the macrophages are signaled by the tumor to defend and mend the war zone now these confused macrophages further signal the heavy duty military called t-cells of the body that we have taken care of this and this is no longer an active war zone thus masking a terrifying cancer threat and this is exactly where my research scores by making the macrophages edited so that the tumors can no longer fool them by deleting a novel drug target called sphingosin kinase 2 in these macrophages we were able to convert them from tumor defending to tumor fighting macrophages and that resulted in enhancing the anti-tumor immunity and significantly reducing the number of tumors in our animal model study as you can all see on the right hand side of the panel while further research is required to examine and establish this novel therapy in a further clinical setting i believe this study has the potential to improve health outcomes and win the race against liver cancer progression. Who knows? Maybe we can push down the 2040 predicted mortality numbers and save some good old livers. Thank you.

Rights

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