On a sunny Friday afternoon in May, a group of nine researchers has gathered in a Thomas Jefferson University conference room in the heart of Center City Philadelphia. Among them is Drexel University biomaterials engineer Xiao Huang, who has traveled across town to show the clinicians how his toolkit of designer nanoparticles can precisely steer powerful CAR-T cells — a form of immunotherapy — to fight cancer more effectively.

It’s the first meetup of the Cancer Immune Engineering Working Group (CIE), a newly formed collaboration between researchers of the two universities under the umbrella of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center research consortium.

From the back row of the room, dermatologist Neda Nikbakht, MD, intently listens. She directs Jefferson’s Cutaneous Lymphoma Program and was one of the organizers of the retreat and a co-leader of the working group.

“That is really fascinating,” she says, leaning forward. “Is it fair to say you have this platform of nanoparticles, and you can mix and match with antibody x, ligand y and antigen z? You can make it like we want?”

“Exactly,” replies Huang, who is an assistant professor in Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems.

“I had absolutely no idea,” Nikbakht reflects later, “what engineers could do for cancer. What is fascinating to me is the potential of utilizing these skills for developing new topical therapies of skin cancers.”

Moments like this — when one field opens new possibilities for another — are precisely why the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center research consortium was created. Through cross-mingling institutions and disciplines, including nonmedical fields, the consortium aims to generate new solutions for a disease that strikes more than 24,600 people and kills over 8,000 each year in the center’s seven-county catchment area.

The Cancer Immune Engineering team, one of nine official teams established in the consortium so far, is part of a broader push to target the most common cancers in the Greater Philadelphia region — including breast, lung, prostate, gastrointestinal and myeloma — and to develop innovative prevention strategies and public education campaigns.

“We need to understand as physicians, as clinicians and biomedical researchers what bioengineers do and how we can use their skills in our research and clinical practice,” Nikbakht adds. “That’s the goal of this retreat.”

The Power of Pairing Up

Begun in 1991, the sidney Kimmel Cancer Center gained the National Cancer Institute’s nod as a cutting-edge cancer center in 1996 and was elevated to the coveted “comprehensive” status in 2024 — a seal of approval that places it in an elite group of just 57 such cancer centers nationwide.

By all accounts, the interdisciplinary approach of the Jefferson-Drexel partnership, which began in 2013 and expanded in 2021, played an outsized role in the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center winning the designation that had eluded it for years. Former University President John Fry and Charles B. Cairns, MD, the Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Dean of the College of Medicine and senior vice president of health affairs at Drexel, were instrumental in advancing Drexel’s collaboration with the center.

“It was a very heavy lift,” says Andrew E. Chapman, DO, who is the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center’s director and executive vice president for cancer research and oncology services at Jefferson Health as well a nationally prominent medical oncologist and physician scientist. In 2018, the center’s Cancer Center Support Grant submission failed to receive “comprehensive” status from the NCI — a disappointment that motivated the Drexel and Jefferson teams to redouble their efforts. That the center succeeded in 2024 “speaks to the growth and development of the science within the center,” he says.

At the heart of the cancer center are four scientific program areas: Cancer Risk and Control, Molecular Oncology Regulation and Approaches, Translational and Cellular Oncology, and Immune Cell Regulation and Targeting.

Drexel, Chapman says, is critical to the equation. Its competencies in biomedical research, bioengineering and population sciences are key to innovating fresh treatments. Combined with a translational ethos and expertise in training and community education, Drexel adds both breadth and depth to the cancer center.

“The collaboration between the universities has been strengthened,” he says, “and we’re seeing tremendous fruit from that.”

“Drexel’s faculty will bring transformational contributions across the continuum of research that will lead to improved quality of life of patients and their families in many novel ways,” adds Kenny J. Simansky, former senior vice dean for research at Drexel’s College of Medicine and co-leader of the consortium partnership. Drexel’s scientific strength in understanding the cellular process of disease, for example, can be combined with research expertise in aging, population science and caregiving to improve survival and quality of life outcomes.

In the early years of the center, Drexel’s investigators were mostly drawn from its College of Medicine. The addition in 2024 of six more Drexel colleges and schools — in public health, nursing, engineering, biomedical engineering, computing and informatics, and the arts and sciences — increased the number of potential collaborations.

Both institutions are securing multi-PI grants, co-authoring papers and conducting clinical trials, including a first-in-human study for advanced prostate cancer sufferers. At the same time, teams are working to improve community engagement, advance health for all and commit to training the next generation of cancer researchers.

One measure of success is the cancer center’s funding of pilot projects that involve investigators from both Jefferson and Drexel. In the past three academic years, the cancer center has awarded 19 grants for about $1.17 million, 10 of them in the 2024–2025 academic year, according to Noreen M. Robertson, DMD, who is senior associate vice dean for research at Drexel’s College of Medicine and a co-leader of the consortium and longtime member of the center’s research executive committee. Projects include cancer-focused studies that play to Drexel’s research strengths, including in HIV, aging and public health. “This is one way we’re building collaborations,” she says. “We’re bringing these research areas to the cancer center.”

Among the researchers supported through these grants is Professor Rose Ann DiMaria-Ghalili, senior associate dean of research of Drexel’s College of Nursing and Health Professions and Drexel’s interim associate vice provost for research and innovation, whose work has been greatly enhanced by partnering with Jefferson investigators.

One pilot project, in conjunction with Jefferson professor of pharmacy practice Emily Hajjar, is looking at the effectiveness of interventions, such as a patient consultation with a geriatric clinical pharmacist, to reduce the numerous medications that older adults with cancer often take — a situation that can lead to serious interactions and adverse health outcomes. Another, with Drexel epidemiologist and principal investigator Agus Surachman in the School of Public Health and Jefferson oncologist Ana María López, is assessing day-to-day psychosocial stress using mobile phones among long-term breast cancer survivors of various ethnicities as a factor in aging and cognitive decline.

“I don’t think these studies would have happened without the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and the research agreements we have between the two institutions,” DiMaria-Ghalili says.

The Road to ‘Comprehensive’

Drexel and Jefferson’s institutional ties were put to the test in August 2023, when the center underwent its most important review yet.

On Aug. 24, 15 NCI reviewers came to the 31st floor of Jefferson Tower on Market Street. This was the do-or-die moment for the cancer center as it sought comprehensive status.

“It’s almost theatrical,” says Drexel professor of pharmacology and physiology Alessandro Fatatis, MD, half-joking that no one slept during the two years of preparations. “It’s a lot of work and a lot of planning. Everything has to be flawless.”

To achieve comprehensive status, the NCI reviewers were looking for demonstrated excellence across multiple domains of cancer research and care including: Scientific Leadership and Depth in Multidisciplinary Research, Transdisciplinary Collaboration, Community Outreach and Education, Clinical Trials and Institutional Commitment.

Under Chapman’s leadership, faculty and professional staff had prepared a 1,200-page proposal, divided into four binders, that delved into all that the cancer center had accomplished and its future plans. One by one, the four program leaders highlighted the most important projects developed in recent years.

“The best thing you can show, and we did, is going from bench research, basic science, into the clinic and startups,” Fatatis says. “Drexel, as second nature for an institution, moves discoveries to the clinical arm or society in general. Drexel has impacted that culture at Thomas Jefferson University.”

That bench-to-bedside pipeline continues to flow abundantly. Recently, an important discovery was made about the typical way to treat prostate cancer in Fatatis’ metastases-focused lab. Commonly, the production of testosterone is blocked. “If done, it stops cancer cells in their tracks,” says Fatatis. But in some cases, this standard of care could unleash the cytokine interleukin-1, a type of protein that impacts the immune system and promotes the spread of cancer. “You might, in a subgroup of patients, actually make things worse,” he warns.

Without the consortium, this finding might have stayed buried in a niche scientific journal. Instead, it sparked discussion among his clinical partners.

“Now, they’re thinking about the impact of standard of care and the imporance of measuring this cytokine and possibly developing means to counteract its effects,” he says. “It’s good translational science.”

Fatatis, who also serves as the cancer center’s associate director for basic research, has a long history with the center and helped to lay the foundation for today’s many alliances. In 2009, cancer biologist Karen Knudsen invited Fatatis to join her new prostate cancer working group, recognizing his expertise in metastasis. That early connection inspired Richard Pestell, MD, who was director of the center at that time, to explore the possibility of Drexel joining Jefferson in a consortium. (Knudsen went on to direct the Kimmel cancer center, leaving in 2021 to head the American Cancer Society.)

“It was a match made in heaven,” Fatatis says. “I could interact with additional scientists in this area of oncology. After a while, other Drexel scientists followed.”

That momentum is drawing in researchers from fields not typically associated with cancer studies, such as the College of Arts and Sciences (CoAS).

One is Susan Bell, professor emerita of sociology, whose work brings a vital sociological lens to the cancer center’s approach to cancer care for all. In collaboration with Ana María López, MD, a medical oncologist at Jefferson, Bell received a pilot grant to investigate disparities in cervical cancer outcomes.

Combining their expertise, they conducted in-depth interviews — in Spanish and English — to explore why Latinas are more at risk than non-Latina white women to die from the disease. Maeve Fitzgerald, a sociology student who worked as a research assistant under Bell, presented a poster in 2024 titled “Latinas and Cervical Cancer in the United States: A Review of the Literature” at a Jefferson conference focused on cancer care in the Latino community.

In May, Meghan Butryn, a Drexel professor and associate head of psychological and brain sciences in CoAS, received a $2.9 million grant to expand her Eatwell Project — a study launched in 2020 with Jefferson radiation oncologist Nicole Simone, MD, that used behavioral coaching to promote cancer-preventive grocery choices.

“For cancer prevention, we really need to take a multi-disciplinary approach where we combine our behavioral science with biological and medical science,” Butryn says. “Eating behavior is a good example. We’re learning every day that what we eat can impact cancer risk and outcomes during treatment.”

Over at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health, population scientist Jan Eberth, professor and chair of health management and policy at Drexel, collaborated with Jefferson’s Ronald E. Myers on a qualitative study about how primary care physicians engage patients in lung cancer screening decisions and with Jefferson physician-researcher Julie Barta, MD, on a review of lung cancer screening patients seen at Jefferson.

“The fact we have a relationship with a cancer center allows us to have a foot in the door to be able to do a research study that involves patients or working with healthcare providers,” says Eberth. “It gives us that opportunity we would not have otherwise.”

The same could be said about novel research on HIV and cancer. Gabe Romano, assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology at Drexel’s College of Medicine and co-leader of the CIE working group, runs a lab focused on studying cancer drug resistance via mouse models, genomics and computational biology. He had never worked on HIV until he was drawn to Drexel in 2022, but the strong HIV research program in his department prompted new collaborations. In Philadelphia, Romano says he found a large population of people living longer with HIV thanks to antiviral therapy. But this same group was also at risk of developing certain cancers — such as melanoma, lung cancer and lymphoma — and they tended to be less responsive to cancer therapies than the general population.

As a result, he says, people with HIV and melanoma are dying at higher rates than those without HIV. He’s interested in learning why.

Drexel’s large cohort of HIV patients — about 800 people — allows for the collection of blood samples crucial to Romano’s research. Through the consortium’s newly established HIV and Cancer Working Group, Romano connected with Jefferson medical oncologist Rino S. Seedor, MD, who specializes in melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer. She has provided clinical expertise on melanoma as well as samples from patients with melanoma but not HIV, to serve as contrasts for Romano’s samples. Romano and Seedor are also working with Christian Sell, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Drexel’s College of Medicine, on a pilot award to study the role immune dysfunction may play in the increased rate and aggressiveness of melanoma in both older individuals and people living with HIV.

This kind of data-driven, patient-specific research exemplifies the cancer center’s interest in addressing health care across vulnerable populations and shows how the consortium leverages ongoing research, core facilities and clinical expertise across institutions.

Seedor says that the partnerships have inspired her research interests in melanoma in HIV and older individuals. After working with Sell and Romano she joined a national Geriatric Oncology Working Group (ECOG-ACRIN) and will be the co-chair on a national multi-site clinical trial evaluating the treatment of melanoma specifically in older patients. “This consortium helped expand the type of research I can do and build my career,” she says.

Meanwhile, Chris Rodell, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Drexel and a CIE co-leader, is working with Romano on different ways to engineer drug delivery systems. In one instance, his lab has formulated injectable hydrogels made from nanoparticles to combat melanoma by delivering drugs to specific cells that Romano’s lab identified as known to suppress the immune system. The delivery system changes these cells’ phenotype in a way that work with rather than against cancer immunotherapies, while reducing side effects. Rodell shared this research at the CIE retreat.

“Science is a team sport,” Rodell says. “You need the people in basic science and in engineering. You also need the clinicians. We’re all trained in different approaches to problems and different ways of thinking.”

Inviting the Public In

Community engagement is a key expectation for cancer centers with the government’s “comprehensive” designation, and Drexel’s partnership with the cancer center has led to more opportunities for its researchers and students to engage with the public.

As an example, the cancer center’s Making Research CLEAR (Community Learning and Experience about Research) program paired Jennifer Hope, PhD ’17, a Drexel assistant professor of microbiology and immunology who works with cancer and chronic virus infection models, with Stage 4 lung cancer survivor Amy Grove, 53, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, who was interested in learning how basic science leads to translational targeted therapies like the one that has benefited her. So far, Grove has visited Hope’s lab and observed flow cytometry, a technique to analyze the types and states of immune cells in blood or tumor samples.

“This is an opportunity to remind ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Hope says. “We’re trying to move treatments forward. It’s not just about the paper, the grants, the trainees’ degrees.”

Says Grove: “The regular public doesn’t get to experience what goes on behind those [lab] doors. This experience helps to explain to those in my online cancer communities why it costs so much and takes so long to get potential treatments and breakthroughs out.”

Another cancer center program, Community Engaged Research Training for Emerging Scientists (CERTES), supports student scholars in sharing the science with the public and supporting health research as a career. Molecular biology doctoral student Riley Young, 25, of Darby, created a dozen two-minute TikTok videos featuring scientists at Drexel and the cancer center talking about their career paths. “I tried to use social media to make science people less science-y,” she says. “I want people to see, this is actually really fun.”

Amy Leader, associate director of the cancer center’s Office of Community Engagement & Outreach, says programs like CLEAR and CERTES are crucial at a time when mistrust in science is widespread.

“They break down barriers between the community and research and science,” she says, “and foster transparency and trust in the work we are doing.”

One of the first personnel announcements made when the center received its comprehensive designation was the appointment of Annette Gadegbeku, MD, as senior associate dean of Community Health & Inclusive Excellence at Drexel’s College of Medicine. She works with the cancer center on reducing disparate cancer outcomes through prevention education in underserved and marginalized communities and by recruiting a representative selection of participants in the scientific workforce and in clinical trials.

“It all filters back into health equity as the goal,” she says.

Ideas in Play

Back in the conference room with the CIE working group members, medical oncologist Pierluigi Porcu, MD, peppers Huang with questions about his designer nanoparticles.

“You envision these particles, whatever size they may be, whatever composition they have, as a platform for ex vivo stimulation of the T-cells?” he asks. Porcu is director of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies and HSCT, program leader of the cancer center’s Immune Cell Regulation and Targeting Program, and one of the leaders of the HIV and Cancer Working Group.

“Yes,” Huang says. “Also in vivo, by local injection.”

“Do you have any preclinical data on the safety of these materials in vivo?”

“PLGA actually is used in more than 10 FDA-approved drugs,” Huang says, referring to the polymer used to make the particles.

“Interesting,” Porcu says, nodding enthusiastically. “Really great.”

As the retreat winds down, the researchers agree that the possibilities of synergistic projects are many, and they would take the weekend to plot next steps.

“What this allows,” Porcu says, “is innovative, transdisciplinary science.”

Exactly the intent of comprehensive cancer centers.