Ruby Sims, a postdoctoral scholar in pediatric hematology and oncology at the Broad Stem Cell Research Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has been awarded the Cystic Fibrosis Research Institute’s Elizabeth Nash Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Alex’s Lemonade Stand Young Investigator Award.
The Elizabeth Nash Memorial Fellowship funds postdoctoral fellows conducting cystic fibrosis-related research at academic and hospital institutions nationwide. With the fellowship, Sims will build upon nanotechnologies developed by the Jonas Lab in the pediatrics department at the Geffen School of Medicine and the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, or CNSI. The goal is to create a targeted delivery system for gene editing and long-term curative treatments for cystic fibrosis patients.
Her research will be conducted with Dr. Steven Jonas, assistant professor of pediatrics at the medical school and an investigator at CNSI; Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, pediatrics professor at the Geffen School of Medicine and associate director of translational research at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA; and Dr. Donald Kohn, distinguished professor of pediatrics and microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the Geffen School of Medicine. All are also members of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Alex’s Lemonade Stand Young Investigator Award, which supports early-career researchers in pediatric oncology, provides funding that includes $60,000 per year for three years. Sims plans to develop a research project to advance cell-based therapy delivery strategies to increase pediatric acute myeloid leukemia treatment options. Current therapeutic research involves engineering a patient’s immune cells to target specific cell surface markers, which requires collecting cells from people whose immune systems have been weakened by chemotherapy.
Sims’ research aims to engineer immune cells directly within the body, using an optimized nanoparticle delivery system inspired by recent COVID-19 vaccines. The nanoparticles will be enhanced with targeting capabilities to ensure they deliver cargo to immune cells, minimizing interactions with other cell types. According to Sims, this approach promises safer and more effective engineering of AML-targeting immune cells within the body.
