Our immune system protects us from infection, but many aspects of its complex processes are still not understood, including why this protection sometimes fails during cancer treatment.
Certain immune cells, known as T cells, reach a point of exhaustion or dysfunction where they lose their ability to kill tumour cells.
Finding the targets that can drive the process of exhaustion to be reversed could enhance the body’s defences and improve cancer survival rates.
PhD Biomedical Science student Disha Mehta is applying AI and single-cell technologies to build a T cell ‘atlas’ to increase our knowledge of how these cells function during cancer immunotherapy treatments.
The potential impact of this research is profound; understanding these cell dynamics can significantly enhance immunotherapy strategies and improve outcomes for patients.
Disha Mehta, PhD Biomedical Science student.
With advice and supervision from Professor Sean Lim and Dr Owen Rackham, Disha’s research is funded by the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) and the Institute for Life Sciences.
Professor Sean Lim is an Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant in Haematological Oncology at the University's Centre for Cancer Immunology, and Dr Owen Rackham is an Associate Professor in Systems Biology.
Finding an actionable target
At the exciting interface between single-cell technology and AI, Disha has used anonymised publicly available single cell data to build her database or ‘atlas’ of over a million T cells. She has then fine-tuned a machine learning model that predicts regulators that will help reverse T cell exhaustion.
Using AI significantly speeds up the process of finding the right regulators to reverse the exhaustion of the T cells.
It is an interdisciplinary project with the right blend of computational biology, bioinformatics and experimental biology. We use data gathered from patients, computational models to predict outcomes, and lab-based single-cell techniques as validation.
Disha Mehta, PhD Biomedical Science student.
“Once I have an actionable target it could translate into a biomarker to help reverse T cell exhaustion or offer a novel target for therapeutic intervention. Our aim is that either alone or in combination with current therapeutics treatments we can improve outcomes for lymphoma patients.”
Contributing to a bigger purpose
Disha knows the impact of cancer from first-hand experience.
“I have a family member who was diagnosed with cancer, and I've seen how horrible the disease is and what kind of impact it has, not just on the person, but also on the family.
“I am passionate about contributing to a bigger purpose and doing something that will not just benefit my family, but the whole of society.
“My work with single cells is such a small thing, but it could actually trigger a cascade of knowledge that will really help change the lives of many people.”
