[bioundgrd] SPRING 2015: 7.341 Of Mice and Men: Humanized Mice in Cancer Research

[Joyce Roberge]

7.341 Of Mice and Men: Humanized Mice in Cancer Research

Instructor: Mandeep Kaur (mkaur at mit.edu<mailto:mkaur at mit.edu>, 4-5100, laboratory of Jianzhu Chen)

Spring 2015. Wednesdays 11 am – 1 pm (Class day and time are flexible.) Room 68-150.

Almost everyone knows someone whose life has been affected by cancer. This devastating disease, which
still carries a social stigma in certain parts of the world, generally remains unbeatable despite numerous
efforts to curb and curtail it since the inception of the War On Cancer in the 1970s. Why is cancer such a
difficult disease to treat? Despite all the effort and money poured into developing new cancer treatments,
why are there so few cancer therapies that specifically target tumor cells? What is the best system to
model the development of a human tumor? How can novel therapies be tested in a system that mimics the
human body by modeling the interaction between human tumor cells and a human immune system, which
plays a role in the detection and elimination of tumor cells? Cancer is thought to develop and spread by
escaping surveillance from human immune cells, which would otherwise eliminate it. How can new
treatment modalities, especially immune-based therapies that harness the natural ability of immune cells
to kill target cells, be developed to treat cancer? These and other questions will be addressed in this
course. We will explore the concepts of mouse models for human cancer, humanized cancer mice and
cancer immunotherapy by reading recent and classic research articles. Humanized mice, like Mouse Man
from the comic world, are essentially mice on the outside and human in the inside because of the presence
of an intact and functional human immune system after engraftment with human stem cells. In humanized
cancer mice the development of a human tumor occurs alongside a normal human immune system. We
will focus on analyzing and critiquing research papers describing the development of human cancer
models using humanized mice, thus hopefully mirroring the situation in patients. A review of the
literature and a dissection of experimental designs will serve as a framework to guide discussions about
the strengths and weaknesses of humanized mice (also referred to as humice) in cancer research and their
unique position as a platform for the testing of new therapies prior to use in the clinic. The course will end
with the exploration of a tantalizing new concept: the development of “personalized mice” or mouse
“avatars” for individual cancer patients to test drug toxicities prior to dosing the patient as an effort to
improve therapeutic efficacy and minimize undesired side effects. Many believe that immunotherapy
represents the future of cancer therapy and humanized mice are a recent addition to the cancer biologist’s
tool-kit for modeling human cancer. This course will act as an introduction to the latest developments in
the fields of cancer biology and immunotherapy. We will use the humice cancer field as a vehicle to
fulfill the primary objective of this course -- the art and science of reading, analyzing and critiquing
research articles. We will also have the opportunity to attend one or more seminars by experts in the field
and visit a research laboratory actively involved in the generation of cancer humice.

Begin forwarded message:





Thanks for your help.

Best,
Mandeep

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mandeep Kaur, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
mkaur at mit.edu<mailto:mkaur at mit.edu> || (617)-324-5100








Joyce Roberge
Undergraduate Program
Biology Education Office 68-120
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
31 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-4718
fax: 617-258-9329
email: roberge at mit.edu<mailto:roberge at mit.edu>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/bioundgrd/attachments/20141219/d56c4440/attachment-0001.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 7.341s-Kaur-Humice in cancer research.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 173849 bytes
Desc: 7.341s-Kaur-Humice in cancer research.pdf
Url : http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/bioundgrd/attachments/20141219/d56c4440/attachment-0001.pdf