Gauri Lamture, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research fellow at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) in the Division for Cell and Gene Therapy (Bhattarai Lab). Studied approaches to improve the production, potency, and safety of CAR-T cell therapies without compromising critical quality attributes. Explored the loss of CD19 antigen in B cells when cocultured with anti-CD19 CAR-T cells.

Elucidated the mechanism of action of novel sesquiterpene lactones as anti-cancer agents in pancreatic cancer. * in vitro methods to assess the inhibition of the NF-κB pathway by sesquiterpene lactones in pancreatic cancer cells. Identified TAK-1 as a target for this novel sesquiterpene lactone. * Studied the effects of sesquiterpene lactones on oxidative stress- glutathione and thioredoxin pathways. * Developed targeted sesquiterpene lactone loaded liposomal formulation for pancreatic cancer. The drug was loaded into liposomes by passive equilibration and passive encapsulation methods. Drug loading was determined by HPLC, UV detection.

Studied the effects of irreversible electroporation (IRE) as a non-thermal ablative technique to cause pancreatic cancer cell death- in vitro and in vivo. We achieved success in delivering larger amounts of drug to the cancer cells and in the tumor models, in combination with IRE. Explored the drug combination treatment of Actinomycin-D and Dimethylamino parthenolide (DMAPT) in a human pancreatic cancer cell line. We analyzed the combination index at a fixed dose ratio of the two drugs and proposed a mechanism of action for the activity of the drugs in human pancreatic cancer cells.