Bob and Penny Barnhill of Tarboro, North Carolina, longstanding participants in UNC Lineberger’s Seed Grant Program, appreciate that supporting research in its earliest phases can lead to important advances in the future.
Bob Barnhill believes in the power of venture funding. As the chairman and chief executive officer of Barnhill Contracting Company in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and as a supporter of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, he understands the value of making investments in early-stage ideas and emerging enterprises that show promise to be both successful and stand the test of me.
It is this entrepreneurial philosophy that motivates Bob and his wife, Penny, to be longstanding participants in UNC Lineberger’s Seed Grant Program. In 2007, they created the Barnhill Family Seed Grant Fund for Cancer Research, and established The Barnhill Fund for Advances in Cellular Immunotherapy in 2016.
“We like to invest in things that we think will make a difference and offer a benefit for a long period of time,” said Barnhill, who, together with Penny, is a member of the cancer center’s Board of Visitors. “We have a lot of confidence that these grants will provide support that will allow the researcher to achieve some early success, and that success will lead to federal funding.”
‘A whole new lease on life’
T-cell therapies have shown very encouraging results in early clinical trials against some advanced, hard-to-treat types of leukemia and lymphomas. Ian Dale of Cary, North Carolina (pictured with his wife Laura), was diagnosed in January 2016 with anaplastic large cell lymphoma and told he would live four to six months without treatment. He underwent chemotherapy and radiation, but the cancer spread to his liver and spleen. He enrolled in a UNC Lineberger clinical trial for cellular immunotherapy treatment; the cancer went into remission. “I have a whole new lease on life. I’m here when I probably wouldn’t be. I actually had a scan and was given the all clear. I’m officially a survivor.”
The Barnhill’s latest round of support will help underwrite one of the most promising of UNC Lineberger’s “big bets” against cancer: a clinical research program that uses a patient’s own immune cells to target and direct an an ack against their cancer.
The cancer center launched its Cellular Immunotherapy Program in 2015 with the recruitment of Gianpietro Dotti, MD, and Barbara Savoldo, MD, PhD, from the Cell and Gene Therapy Program at the Baylor College of Medicine. These two investigators have more than a decade of research experience in the use of adoptive cell therapy for the treatment of patients with cancer with a particular focus on the design and implementation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) modified T cells.
Today, UNC Lineberger is one of only six academic medical centers nationally with the scientific, technical and clinical capabilities to develop and deliver CAR-T immunotherapy. As of early 2018, nearly two dozen patients from North Carolina and across the United States have participated in three CAR-T clinical trials for lymphoma and leukemia at the cancer center. Thanks in part to private support, including the Barnhill Fund for Advances in Cellular Immunotherapy, UNC Lineberger researchers intend to open other trials that target multiple myeloma, ovarian cancer and glioblastoma.
In addition to working on new potential CAR-T therapies for hard-to-treat cancers, UNC Lineberger researchers are focused on making the treatments safer. While CAR-T cell therapies have produced remarkable results in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, there can be potentially lethal side effects to these treatments. Savoldo is developing a “safety switch” that can deactivate the CAR-T cells in case a patient experiences toxic side effects.
Earlier this year, Savoldo and her team initiated a clinical trial for a CAR-T cell treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia with a built-in-safety switch. This switch can halt the expansion of infused T cells, and thereby reduce potentially lethal side effects, such as cytokine release syndrome. In addition, researchers believe this approach could help leukemia patients regenerate their immune system after it has been depleted by treatment.
“The question that we want to investigate is: Can we, at one point, eliminate the residual T-cells that are no longer needed because the malignancy is gone so we can allow normal B-cells to reconstitute?” Savoldo said.
Seed grant funding from UNC Lineberger helped launched the laboratory studies that demonstrated that the safety switch could eliminate CAR-T cells, and in a manner that clinicians could control. Building on those results, Savoldo secured a three- year, $600,000 award from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to help bring the technology into clinical trials.Barnhill is confident that his family’s investment in the Seed Grant Program will pay dividends now and in the future. “UNC Lineberger is a special place,” said Barnhill, who lives in Tarboro. “The researchers, the doctors and the leadership are exceptional. They truly are on the leading edge of cancer treatment and their research e orts will keep them on the forefront. We’re very fortunate to have this kind of health care in North Carolina.”