Cancer researcher wants to make treatment better, more accessible

In the ongoing search for better cancer treatments, immunotherapies are the cutting edge, harnessing the body’s own immune system to attack tumors more effectively.

But only fraction of cancer patients benefit.

DaeYong Lee, a new assistant professor and cancer researcher at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, wants to use biomaterials to improve immunotherapies and expand their access to reduce disparities in cancer treatment outcomes.

“I’m an engineering person, so I want to reduce the cost of therapies and at the same time optimize their effects,” said Lee, a member of the research institute’s Cancer Research Center — Roanoke and assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics. “We can increase the applicability of immunotherapies to both diverse patients and diverse types of tumors.”

Lee’s research focuses on development of synthetic proteins, or polypeptides, that can enhance the body’s own immune responses.

“DaeYong represents what we really want to grow here, which is engineering approaches to solve cancer’s big problems,” said Jenny Munson, professor and director of the Cancer Research Center — Roanoke. “He does what we as biomedical engineers should do. He identifies a problem, which in his lab is new ways to use the immune system against cancer, and then he builds a solution.”

“Dr. Lee is a great addition to our growing cancer research programs at the research institute and across Virginia Tech," said Michael Friedlander, executive director of the research institute and Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology. “He is one of the new faculty members whose position was made possible through the generous support of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute by the Red Gates Foundation. His skills in chemical engineering and knowledge of immune system function in cancer, along with his outstanding training at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, place him in a strategic position to make major advances in research.”

While pursuing his master’s degree, Lee worked on a nanoparticle to aid in delivering insulin in diabetes patients, but he soon turned his attention to cancer.

During his doctoral studies and as a postdoctoral researcher, Lee developed polypeptides to make immunotherapies more effective.

Immunotherapies include CAR T cell therapy, in which cells from a patient’s immune system are removed, engineered to include chimeric antigen receptors to find and fight cancer, and returned to the patient’s blood; cytokines, or synthetic versions of proteins that increase immunity; checkpoint inhibitors, drugs which block proteins that keep the immune system from attacking cancer cells; and cancer vaccines.

According to Lee, the body’s immune cells can become “exhausted,” which reduces the potency of immunotherapy. He aims to develop biomaterials that can “re-educate” immune cells to increase their effectiveness and reduce undesired toxicity.

One polypeptide he developed has been shown to have the  ability to selectively target, penetrate, and kill cancer cells. Another protein Lee designed has been shown to disrupt cancer cell function, triggering cell death, and increase anti-tumor effects in the body’s immune cells.

While immunotherapies are proving to be powerful cancer therapies, Lee notes that because they are developed as highly personalized treatments, relatively few patients benefit.

An overarching goal of Lee’s work is improving access to immunotherapies by broadening their applicability. He wants to identify more universal biological markers in cancers and focus on those to make immunotherapies more available. Having therapies that reach more patients reduces disparities in treatment outcomes. In addition, the more widely used a drug can be, the more cost effective its production, lowering the cost to consumers.

Lee’s initial work will focus on breast cancer. He will also continue the lines of research that he began during his doctoral research while at  the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, and from his postdoctoral work there and at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Lee, a native of Incheon, South Korea, was drawn to the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute because of its state-of-the-art facilities and high quality of research.

“I can find collaborators here, and I really want to use the technology here to improve my own research,” he said. “I like the environment here, and the people here. It’s the very best fit for me.”