Last Updated on February 24, 2024
Within the field of cancer research, effective treatment of children’s brain cancer has remained elusive. There are indeed standard treatment options, such as radiation, surgical resection, and chemotherapy, but these treatment options can vary wildly in terms of efficacy.
These treatments also carry with them significant morbidity rates, as well as the reduction of quality-of-life for patients, including the potential to cause impaired vision and hearing.
The root cause for the lack of an effective therapy for children’s brain cancer is the absence of a fitting research model.
More accurately, this was previously a barrier to research, but Dr. Sampurna Chatterjee and her colleagues actually developed a novel research model with the express purpose of facilitating research on children’s brain cancer.
The result of this development has been more accurate and efficient research of numerous brain diseases.
We would like to share with you some of the details of how this model was developed and how it’s being used today. But first, a brief introduction to the career and accomplishments of Dr. Chatterjee.
Dr. Chatterjee is currently a translational scientist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, helping to find cures for difficult-to-treat cancers. Previously, she developed novel therapeutics for brain cancers with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Dr. Chatterjee has, in fact, developed multiple novel therapies for the treatment of various malignant cancers, and she continues to be strongly motivated by the knowledge that her work has a highly positive real-world impact.
Recently, Dr. Chatterjee was named a recipient of the Extraordinary Women Advancing Healthcare in Massachusetts Award. Only ten recipients are chosen from more than one hundred fifty candidates. More on this award later in the article.
First and foremost, we will be focusing on Dr. Chatterjee’s innovative research model and its utility in cutting-edge medical research.
A new research model
Dr. Chatterjee and her colleagues set out to advance children’s brain cancer research by developing a novel research model.
To understand exactly why research models are so crucial to the search for cancer therapies and potential cures, we turn to Dr. Chatterjee, who provided this useful explanation.
“Without models, we cannot develop and test novel, more efficacious, and safer therapies. Without models, we also can’t image the tumors in order to study tumor initiation, growth, morphology, and response to therapy.”
So in the absence of models, specific aspects of research slow or even halt completely. But with access to appropriate models, research can not only continue but advance as well.
Developing accurate models, however, is far from easy. The value of these models is in their ability to provide an accurate estimation of how a disease acts on part of the body under various conditions, and most importantly, how it will respond to various treatments and therapies.
This is where Dr. Chatterjee’s new model comes into play.
“To address this critical missing link in cancer research, my colleagues and I developed a novel model as a research tool to study cancers in the hindbrain, making it the only existing model that recapitulates the disease nearly perfectly.”
That’s a general overview of what this model is and why it was needed, but it’s definitely worth talking about its value in further detail.
Advantages
We’ve already covered the central motivation for the development of this model: facilitating cancer therapy research for children’s brain cancer.
But the model has proven to be valuable far beyond this specific application. One of the most significant advantages of the model thus far has been its broad-scale application to the study of several other diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Multiple sclerosis, Encephalitis, brain metastasis, and even benign tumors.
Even further, the model can allow for precise, long-term monitoring of disease development and the effects of each disease on brain tissues, blood vessels, and neurological functions.
Dr. Chatterjee:
“This is particularly beneficial for an enhanced understanding of cellular and molecular changes during disease progression to find cures for diseases for both Alzheimer’s and cancer, which are two leading global causes of death.”
The utility of Dr. Chatterjee’s model has led to widespread adoption. Let’s take a look at who has been using this model and for what.
Adoption
Dr. Chatterjee provided us with a breakdown of known uses of this research model across multiple continents and within research institutes, hospitals, and pharmaceutical research and development.
First, scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical Hospital, where Dr. Chatterjee also worked, have used this research model to measure the amount of stress a brain tumor can produce in its surrounding environment, i.e. the brain and the skull. This type of stress is known as solid stress, and it can promote tumor progression while also hindering the delivery and efficacy of therapies.
Next, scientists at Merrimack Pharmaceutical have used the model as a way of establishing relevant models for brain metastases, which is often fatal. The goal of these models is to understand the stages of brain metastasis so that solutions can be identified for preventing or delaying the spread of cancer in the brain.
Colleagues at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, affiliated with the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Switzerland, have mentioned this model in reference to the observation of in vivo cell behavior in order to track and image the invasion of brain tumor cells in an attempt to find a cure for glioblastoma, which is the most deadly brain cancer without a cure.
Beyond research, the model has also been used as a way of visualizing the development of Alzheimer’s in the brain.
Dr. Chatterjee is excited to see just how big of a difference this model is making in the scientific community, and she also feels that its adoption is indicative of the value of collaboration within the international scientific community.
“Over the years, we have seen a massive and rapid progression of research and developments via diverse collaborations within departments, within different groups within the same institutes, and even across different organizations locally and internationally. This is essentially because when we collaborate, it allows for colleagues with diverse expertise to join forces and work on different components of research simultaneously.”
As an example, Dr. Chatterjee mentioned the development of COVID-19 vaccines, as biologists, physicians, and engineers all worked in tandem to move science forward, for the benefit of all humanity.
Award-winning research
The development of the research model we’ve been discussing perhaps even played a part in Dr. Chatterjee’s receipt of the 2022 Extraordinary Women Advancing Healthcare in Massachusetts Award.
One of the major criteria behind this award is bringing new ideas and thinking to enrich healthcare and demonstrate a commitment to forward-thinking projects that will advance healthcare.
“I would like to think that this research model that my colleagues and I helped to develop is one of the contributions to disease research and development that helped make me eligible to receive this award.”
The award also proves that this research model is far from Dr. Chatterjee’s only major contribution to the advancement of healthcare.
Recent work
We’d like to close the article with a brief overview of Dr. Chatterjee’s more recent work as she’s currently working on multiple projects.
First, Dr. Chatterjee is helping to develop therapies for advanced lung cancer patients in order to prevent relapse and increase life expectancy. This is especially challenging since subsequent tumors can be more aggressive than the primary cancer. Recurring cancers also may not respond to previously used therapies.
Dr. Chatterjee is also currently studying hematological cancers, which are cancers that typically originate in the bone marrow and the lymphatic systems. Since many of these cancers involve immune cells, immunotherapy has become a popular therapy choice for hematological cancers.
Unfortunately, not all patients benefit from these therapies, and so Dr. Chatterjee is trying to gain a better understanding of the complex tumor microenvironment of blood cancers to identify vulnerabilities in order to develop potent therapeutic strategies.
Lastly, Dr. Chatterjee is concluding work on a research discovery project that has the goal of developing novel, non-toxic therapies for children with brain cancer. Survivors who have undergone surgical resection along with chemotherapy and radiation often experience severe cognitive and neurological impairment caused by these treatments.
This can manifest in serious impairments, including hearing loss, blindness, speech impairment, and delayed puberty.
This has motivated Dr. Chatterjee to search for improved treatments for pediatric brain cancer that will encourage a sustainable response without these adverse side effects.
Clearly, Dr. Chatterjee remains committed to combatting serious diseases and improving the lives of patients. The research model she and her colleagues developed is just one piece of a much larger career centered on improving the world in very tangible ways.
Special thanks to Dr. Chatterjee for guiding us through this fascinating look at her cutting-edge scientific research.