Bio

Dr Tammy Kalber obtained a first class with honours in Biomedical Sciences at Kingston University in 2001. She then completed an Astrazeneca/BBSRC Case PhD Studentship (awarded in 2006) at St George’s Hospital Medical School, UCL, where she applied MRI susceptibility contrast to monitoring the growth and therapeutic response of an orthotopic liver metastases model. She then moved to the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre on a 4-year MRC Career Development fellowship, where she worked on liposomal and low molecular weight cancer imaging agents prior to moving to the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI) in 2009.

She is the Cell Imaging Group leader and the Head of Nuclear Imaging at CABI. Her group is funded in part by her EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (awarded in 2014) and consists of 2 early career postdoctoral scientists and 2 PhD students. The group’s research focuses on the development of nanomaterials and novel molecular imaging methods for the tracking of cancer cell therapies and regenerative medicines, as well as the development of novel ultrasound guided delivery techniques, and functional imaging needed for the assessment of organ regeneration or re-vascularization.

Abstract

Clinical trials using cell therapies as cancer agents or in regenerative medicine are rapidly increasing as the cell therapy industry grows, however patient responses have been highly varied. The optimisation of effective cell therapies has been hampered by a lack of in vivo imaging data describing cell infiltration, proliferation and persistence at the disease site. This limits our basic science understanding of cell mechanisms and our clinical management of cell therapies in patients.

The work described herein combines novel nanomaterials and molecular imaging methods to develop a multi-modal imaging approach to provide greater insights into the distribution pattern of the two main cell types used in clinical trials, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and T cells. To this end the following hypotheses were tested; 1) that the gold standard intravenous delivery route utilized in preclinical models restricts the delivery of cells to the lungs, 2) accurate cell localisation and quantification can be used to optimize and develop novel delivery routes on a target tissue basis as well as identify potential hazards to non-target organs, and 3) the kinetics of cell migration to target site requires some form of pre-stimulation/activation to be truly effective.

The results demonstrated the advantages of multi-modal imaging in quantitatively assessing different cell distribution patterns after cell transplantation to improve cell engraftment and evaluate long-term safety hazards which are essential steps in optimizing and translating a cell therapy. Although imaging cannot conclusively answer what proportion of cell uptake is due to mechanical verses active migration this imaging approach can be used to refine methods required to improve MSC homing such as priming MSCs in culture with various cytokines. Despite some challenges, the advantages of using a multi-modal imaging approach in cell tracking would greatly assist future clinical applications of cell-based therapy.