Overall Grant PI
Shawn Hingtgen, PhD
Associate Professor, Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Department of Neurosurgery, UNC School of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill

Visit the UNC-Chapel Hill Targeted Cellular Therapeutic and Imaging Lab site

Research Interests
Translating therapies for neurological diseases using an ex vivo organotypic platform; engineering stem cell therapies to understand and overcome glioblastoma adaption; biocompatible matrices to improve cell-based cancer therapy; creating next generation cell therapies for cancer therapy

Research Plan
Due to their expansive utility, stem cell-based therapies hold the potential to redefine therapeutic approaches and provide cures for many terminal diseases. In the Hingtgen Lab, we seek to harness the potential of stem cells to develop new and better methods for treating terminal cancers, including brain cancer. We use an integrative approach that begins with creating specially designed targeted therapeutic proteins. We then “arm” different stem cell types with the anti-cancer molecules, and investigate the ability of stem cell-based therapies to improve both drug delivery and cancer cell killing using various small animal models of human brain cancer. Central to our research is the extensive integration of non-invasive imaging. We use multiple imaging modalities to provide real-time dynamic feedback on stem cell and tumor cell volumes and distribution, pharmacokinetics of drug delivery, and the overall effectiveness of our therapeutic approaches. By bringing together the tools and techniques of molecular biology, viral vectors, targeted therapeutics, stem cell biology and molecular imaging with highly translatable animal models, we hope to ultimately bring successful cell-based treatments for brain tumors into the clinics.