Publications by authors named "Benjamin Ferland"
Article Synopsis
- Tumor-infiltrating immune cells and cancer cells compete for nutrients in the tumor microenvironment, leading to metabolic reprogramming that affects their functions.
- The study introduced a new method using implantable microdevices to analyze how different metabolites impact the health and endurance of immune versus tumor cells within the native tumor environment.
- Key findings highlight the importance of metabolites like glutamine and arginine in enhancing immune responses, and suggest that optimizing these metabolic pathways could improve the effectiveness of immunotherapies in cancer treatment.
Intratarget Microdosing for Deep Phenotyping of Multiple Drug Effects in the Live Brain.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol
March 2022
A main impediment to effective development of new therapeutics for central nervous system disorders, and for the testing of biological hypotheses in the brain, is the ability to rapidly measure the effect of novel agents and treatment combinations on the pathophysiology of native brain tissue. We have developed a miniaturized implantable microdevice (IMD) platform, optimized for direct stereotactic insertion into the brain, which enables the simultaneous measurement of multiple drug effects on the native brain tissue . The IMD contains individual reservoirs which release microdoses of single agents or combinations into confined regions of the brain, with subsequent spatial analysis of phenotypic, transcriptomic or metabolomic effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate the safety and feasibility of implantation and retrieval of a novel implantable microdevice (IMD) in NSCLC patients undergoing operative resection.
Background: Adjuvant therapy has limited impact on postsurgical outcomes in NSCLC due to the inability to predict optimal treatment regimens.
Methods: An IMD measuring 6.
Background: Tumor heterogeneity is increasingly being recognized as a major source of variability in the histopathological assessment of drug responses. Quantitative analysis of immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunofluorescence (IF) images using biomarkers that capture spatialpatterns of distinct tumor biology and drug concentration in tumors is of high interest to the field.
Methods: We have developed an image analysis pipeline to measure drug response using IF and IHC images along spatial gradients of local drug release from a tumor-implantable drug delivery microdevice.
By observing the activity of anti-cancer agents directly in tumors, there is potential to greatly expand our understanding of drug response and develop more personalized cancer treatments. Implantable microdevices (IMD) have been recently developed to deliver microdoses of chemotherapeutic agents locally into confined regions of live tumors; the tissue can be subsequently removed and analyzed to evaluate drug response. This method has the potential to rapidly screen multiple drugs, but requires surgical tissue removal and only evaluates drug response at a single timepoint when the tissue is excised.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Precursor states of Multiple Myeloma (MM) require detailed molecular analysis to improve risk assessment and treatment strategies for patients.
- Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed early immune system changes, including increased NK cell abundance and altered chemokine receptor expression in precursor stages like MGUS and smoldering myeloma (SMM).
- The study identified loss of specific T-cells and dysregulation of MHC class II in monocytes, both contributing to T cell suppression, offering insights for better immune-based patient stratification in MM progression.