Vanderbilt School of Engineering researcher Emmanuela Adjei-Sowah has been awarded a highly competitive Irvington Postdoctoral Fellow from the Cancer Research Institute for a study that uses lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to activate a protein that helps white blood cells detect and fight cancer.
Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is one of the most common and deadly forms of kidney cancer, yet most patients gain little benefit from existing immunotherapies. These tumors suppress local immune activity, while current treatments that broadly activate the immune system often cause damaging inflammation in healthy tissues.
Her research harnesses LNPs to deliver a specialized RNA molecule that activates RIG-I, a protein that helps immune cells find and eliminate cancer. To make this approach safer and more precise, Adjei-Sowah is engineering a “masked” version of the RNA that stays dormant in circulation and becomes active only once inside the tumor microenvironment.
“Adjei-Sowah’s cross-disciplinary expertise in biomaterial engineering, molecular biology, and translational medicine uniquely equips her to design innovative drug delivery systems and develop next-generation immunotherapies that overcome resistance and immune evasion in cancer,” according to the Institute. “By finding new ways to “heat up” cold tumors, this research could greatly expand the number of patients who benefit from immunotherapy and pave the way for safer, more effective cancer treatments.”
Adjei-Sowah’s sponsor is John Wilson, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and biomedical engineering.
Contact: Lucas Johnson, lucas.l.johnson@vanderbilt.edu