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In Stem Cells, Shah has announced success, at least with mice.

“A few years ago we recognized that stem cells could be used to continuously deliver these therapeutic toxins to tumors in the brain, but first we needed to genetically engineer stem cells that could resist being killed themselves by the toxins,” Shah says. “Now, we have toxin-resistant stem cells that can make and release cancer-killing drugs.”

PE will kill any cell it can get inside, but other labs have succeeded in making it and other cytotoxins enter cancer cells but be resisted by normal cells.

Shah has gone a step further, preventing the PE from acting while it is inside the stem cell that produces it. “We tested these stem cells in a clinically relevant mouse model of brain cancer, where you resect the tumors and then implant the stem cells encapsulated in a gel into the resection cavity,” Shah says. “After doing all of the molecular analysis and imaging to track the inhibition of protein synthesis within brain tumors, we do see the toxins kill the cancer cells and eventually prolonging the survival in animal models of brain tumors.”

Before moving to trials in humans, Shah wants to develop therapies where the PE-producing stem cells operate in conjunction with other cancer-fighting stem cells his lab has produced.