Swayam Prabha MBA, PhD

UW Pharmaceutics
Associate Professor

Email: sprabha@uw.edu | Phone: 206.685.0355

Our Team is involved in designing effective cell-based therapies with fewer side effects for lung and ovarian cancers, both diseases with poor survival rates and in urgent need of novel therapeutic approaches. We take advantage of the natural repair system of the body to deliver cancer therapeutics with lower off target effects. In Greek mythology, the gift of the Trojan Horse allowed the Greek army to bypass the impenetrable walls of the city of Troy. Our Trojan horses are modified mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which can sense and seek out tumors, and deliver drugs that can attract and activate the immune cells directly to tumors. MSCs exist in almost all tissues and can be isolated from the bone marrow, adipose tissue, umbilical cord, liver, muscle, and lung and can be successfully expanded in a petri dish, so that it is possible to use the patient’s own MSC for treatment. This combination of individualized stem-cell medicine and state of the art immune therapy approaches fundamentally differs from conventional therapies. The overall goal of the lab is to improve mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) tumor homing and to fully understand the impact of anticancer drug loading on MSC biology. Current studies show that MSCs nanoengineered to load paclitaxel actively migrate to lung tumors (Patent: 11684638; Targeted delivery system, system components, and methods), where they are retained for several days, and facilitate targeted delivery of the payload and inhibition of tumor growth.