One of the most heartbreaking aspects of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is that by the time a disease is diagnosed, it’s often too late for effective treatment.
“With neurodegeneration, when a patient comes to the clinic, most of the damage has already occurred, and there is little you can do at that point,” said UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Neubauer Family Assistant Professor Milos Simic. “Most of those diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, start decades before you can observe cognitive decline. Therefore, if we can detect the disease earlier, we have a window to intervene and change the course of the disease.”
Simic, who joined UChicago PME in the fall, is developing “immune sentinels,” engineering immune cells into living biosensors. One this technology is developed, diagnosis won’t be a matter of measuring memory loss or cognitive impairment, but a simple blood draw.
“Because they can access places a doctor cannot, these cells can help us detect problems much earlier, right when they are starting,” Simic said.
A new grant from the nonprofit research organization Biohub will help Simic move toward this goal. Simic has received one of 15 synthetic biology grants announced today to researchers across the U.S. and Europe looking to turn immune cells’ remarkable properties into better healthcare.
“We are excited to welcome this dream team of accomplished scientists to our growing community,” said President of Immune Cell Reprogramming and Head of Biohub New York, Andrea Califano. “Technologies developed through these and future projects will bring us closer to our goal of engineering immune cells to act as precision-guided therapeutics to cure or prevent disease.”
Biohub is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with hubs in Chicago and New York. The organization builds the technology to help scientists use AI-powered biology.
As part of its mission “to cure or prevent all disease,” Biohub focuses on funding research that falls outside the traditional grant structure. Simic said a funding opportunity entirely based around synthetic biology was both rare and too good to pass up.
“Synthetic biology is a field full of promise and can at times feel very futuristic,” Simic said. “Biohub’s approach to funding allows for these high-risk, high-reward projects which most traditional funding mechanisms do not. This provides funding for ideas that can be game changing and open a realm of new possibilities that can change human health.”