Reza Shahbazi, PhD

Dr. Shahbazi’s lab is focused on developing CRISPR nanotherapeutics as a one-time therapy, and making these therapeutics available to all patients in the world. Many different congenital and acquired diseases could be treated by precise editing of the faulty DNA carrying the wrong genetic code. Currently, gene editing technologies can be applied ex vivo where cells need to be isolated, treated, and transplanted back to the patient. However, this is a very expensive treatment and limited to only blood cells that are accessible. In his postdoctoral work, Dr. Shahbazi developed a potent CRISPR nanoformulation that can seamlessly deliver both the gene editing component and the template DNA for targeted gene insertion in hematopoietic stem cells and showed its potential as a proof of principle therapy for HIV, and beta thalassemia (Shahbazi et al., Nature Materials, 2019). Currently, along with developing disease specific CRISPR nanotherapeutics, Shahbazi lab is working on developing novel CRISPR nanoformulations to generate engineered T cells with cancer specific T cell receptors (TCR), or chimeric antigen receptor-modified T (CAR-T) cells for cancer immunotherapy. 

Another aspect of Dr. Shahbazi’s lab is to look at the noncoding part of the DNA and search for the key markers for cancer therapy. As it is known only about 1 percent of the DNA is made up of protein-coding genes; the other 99 percent is noncoding which is responsible for producing many different forms of either long or small RNA molecules that facilitate intercellular communication. In the case of neoplasms, these RNA molecules can contribute to tumor growth, treatment resistance, and metastasis. Shahbazi lab is experienced in developing oligo based nanotherapeutics to target specific RNA molecules inside the cancer cells to control tumor growth and metastasis. Previously, Dr. Shahbazi developed a gold-based siRNA nanotherapeutic to treat an aggressive form of breast cancer called triple negative breast cancer. This specific oligo-based formulation was able to control the tumor growth and proliferation in four weeks of treatment with only once a week injection of siRNA nanotherapeutic (Shahbazi et al., Nanomedicine, 2017).

Exosome profiling and looking at the exosomal communication in solid, and liquid tumors at the molecular level is another project that is going on in the Shahbazi lab. This project would help in identifying specific therapeutic markers for cancer therapy.