New director, $10 million grant for Comprehensive Cancer Center

New director, $10 million grant for Comprehensive Cancer Center

A $10 million grant from the AbbVie Foundation will support scientific and educational activities at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center under the leadership of Adekunle (Kunle) Odunsi, MD, PhD, the newly appointed director. A portion of the grant will also establish a permanent endowment, which will continuously support the work of the center for years to come.

Odunsi, who joined UChicago Medicine in March, will be named the AbbVie Foundation Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also serves as Biological Sciences Division Dean for Oncology and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Chicago.

A nationally recognized gynecologic oncologist, Odunsi focuses his research on understanding the mechanisms of immune recognition and tolerance in ovarian cancer and translating these findings to immunotherapy clinical trials. Odunsi pioneered the development of antigen-specific vaccine therapy and next-generation adoptive T cell immunotherapies to prolong remission rates in women with ovarian cancer.

“The AbbVie Foundation’s generous grant will provide our Comprehensive Cancer Center leadership with the resources necessary to advance cancer research and care through the ongoing pursuit of innovative investigation and development of novel cancer therapies that have the potential to improve the lives of people affected by cancer,” said Kenneth S. Polonsky, MD, Dean and Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs for the University of Chicago.

By supporting the director’s vision, the AbbVie Foundation’s grant will empower Comprehensive Cancer Center leadership to act strategically in key areas, such as establishing cross-campus collaborations, discovering and advancing novel therapies, recruiting new faculty, retaining exceptional fellows, and promoting community outreach and engagement.

Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD

NATIONAL RECOGNITION

BSD alumni, postdocs among ‘Inspiring Black Scientists’

Six University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division alumni and two postdoctoral researchers were named among “1,000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America” in the Crosstalk Cell Press Blog.

ALUMNI

Shana Augustin, PhD’13

Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience, National Institutes of Health

William E. Browne, AB’94, PhD’03

Assistant Professor of Biology, the University of Miami

Sunday Francis, PhD’09

Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Minnesota

Avery D. Posey, PhD’11

Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, the University of Pennsylvania

Colles Price, SM’03, PhD’15 Research Scientist at Vizgen

Christopher Schell, PhD’15

Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Biology, University of Washington Tacoma

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS

Tamica Collins, PhD

NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Anthony Williams, PhD

Strunk Family Fellow, Department of Medicine

Christopher Schell, PhD’15, studied evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago and is now an assistant professor at the University of Washington Tacoma.

Read more about Tamica Collins, PhD, on Page 28.

Targeting SARS-CoV-2

University of Chicago researchers are investigating COVID-19 and the virus that causes it from many angles. Here are several interesting projects.

Vitamin D: Reducing COVID-19 risk

High vitamin D levels may protect against COVID-19, especially for Black people, UChicago Medicine researchers found. David Meltzer, PhD’92, MD’93, Fanny L. Pritzker Professor of Medicine, led a retrospective study that examined the relationship between vitamin D levels and likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19. While levels of 30 ng/ml or more are usually considered sufficient, the authors found that Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than people with levels of 40 ng/ml or greater. Statistically significant associations of vitamin D levels with COVID-19 risk were not found in white people. The research team is now recruiting participants for two separate clinical trials testing the efficacy of vitamin D supplements for preventing COVID-19. The research was published in JAMA Network Open in January 2021.

Describing non-symptomatic transmission

During the initial wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City, only between one in five and one in seven cases of the virus was symptomatic. A University of Chicago study found that non-symptomatic cases substantially contribute to community transmission, making up at least 50 percent of the driving force of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This is the first peer-reviewed model to incorporate data about daily testing capacity and changes in testing rates over time to provide a more accurate picture of what proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infections are symptomatic in a large U.S. city. Rahul Subramanian, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, was first author of the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2021.

Using ‘organs in a dish’ to test treatments

Researchers at the University of Chicago were the first to use organoids—mini organs grown in lab dishes by using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) capable of becoming any type of tissue— to quickly identify several drugs capable of preventing infection with SARS-CoV-2. Using organoids derived from human pluripotent stem cells allows scientists to study how actual human cells in an organ-like setting are affected by SARSCoV-2. Huanhuan Joyce Chen, PhD, an assistant professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Ben May Department for Cancer Research, and team grew lung and colon tissue; SARS-CoV-2 primarily infects the respiratory tract, and 25 percent of COVID-19 patients also experience gastrointestinal symptoms. The team screened a library of FDA-approved medications in organoids and validated the drugs in xenograft lung tissues by implanting the hPSC-lung cells in immunocompromised mice. The research was published in Nature in October 2020.

Isolating antibodies

University of Chicago researchers isolated SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies, which have the potential to both treat and diagnose COVID-19. Patrick Wilson, PhD, led an international team that isolated antibodies specific to the spike and internal proteins of SARS-CoV-2 from a unique cohort of COVID-19 patients. The patented product is a panel of more than 100 antibodies that bind various SARS-CoV-2 proteins. The researchers’ focus is on the evolution of the memory B cell response to the virus; specifically, their novel discovery that the B cell response shows substantial evolution toward not only the spike glycoprotein, but the internal antigens as well. Important questions remain and more research is needed, especially with respect to newly emerging variants.

Examining clinical trial disparities

Studies examining the effectiveness of treatments for COVID-19 often do not include the very populations hardest hit by the disease, according to a review by University of Chicago Medicine researchers. Associate Professors Neda Laiteerapong, MD, MS’12, and Anna Volerman Beaser, MD, and team examined 303 active U.S. COVID-19 treatment trials involving more than 92,000 patients and used census data to estimate the proportion of Black and Hispanic individuals who could be potentially recruited from the geographic catchment area of each study’s recruitment hospital. This study did not include vaccine trials. The researchers found the studies were being undertaken at hospitals that less frequently cared for Black and Hispanic patients: Only about 17 percent of these hospitals’ patients were Black and 14 percent were Hispanic. Also often excluded from the trials were people with non-severe comorbidities such as diabetes, and pregnant women. Pritzker School of Medicine student Sukarn Chokkara, MS2, was lead author of the study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in January 2021.

Modeling the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Researchers at the University of Chicago created the first usable computational model of the entire virus responsible for COVID-19—and they are making this model widely available to help advance research during the pandemic. Gregory Voth, PhD, Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry, and team drew on previous experience to find the most important characteristics of each individual component of the virus—and drop the “less important” information— to make a computational model that is comprehensive but still feasible to run on a computer. This technique is called coarse-graining, which Voth and his students have helped to pioneer. The model also provides a framework into which scientists can integrate additional information about the SARS-CoV-2 virus as soon as new discoveries are made. Voth hopes that the model will prove useful for coronavirus drug design as well as understanding mutations that may arise, such as the one detected in the U.K. The research was published in Biophysical Journal in November 2020. Researchers may download the model at https://github. com/alvinyu33/sars-cov-2-public.

Studying llamas’ unique antibodies

Researchers are using the ultra-bright X-rays of the Advanced Photon Source, an accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory, to help turn naturally generated llama antibodies into potentially effective therapies against COVID-19. Llamas belong to a group of mammals called camelids, a group that also includes camels and alpacas. Thanks to a quirk of nature, camelids produce a unique type of antibody against disease. These antibodies, often referred to as nanobodies, are about half the size of the antibodies produced by humans, remarkably stable and easy for scientists to manipulate. Senior Argonne scientist Andrzej Joachimiak, PhD, and team received more than 50 llama antibodies with several proteins of SARS-CoV-2. These antibodies are part of ongoing collaborations with several partners, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Joachimiak said, and will be analyzed to see if they combat the virus’s infectivity.

Targeting SARS-CoV-2