At the beginning of 2025, UC Santa Barbara assistant professor in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Meghan Morrissey was granted the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award for her research behind a new form of cancer treatment that uses repurposed immune cells. The award seeks to recognize and support innovative, high potential cancer research that is still in its early stages.  

Morrissey shared in an interview that she has been studying cancer cell biology since her time as an undergraduate student at the University of Notre Dame 15 years ago. Morrissey went on to get a doctorate degree from Duke University, where she studied how cells move around tissues in order to better understand cancer metastasis, which refers to the spread of cancer throughout the body. She highlighted that the “pathways that cells use during development to do these types of motions are the same as during cancer.” For her postdoctoral research, Morrissey designed “chimeric antigen receptors,” which are synthetic receptors added to the surface of immune cells with the purpose of programming these cells to target and eliminate cancer. 

These projects helped inspire her current research, which involves determining how immune system cells known as macrophages “understand what they’re encountering” and, more precisely, “how do they know what is a healthy cell versus a pathogen or a cancer cell.” Ultimately, Morrissey explains that “if we could understand all of this, then we could understand how to change how [macrophages] respond to a given target.” Existing chimeric antigen receptor treatments are designed to attack cancer cells found in the blood, however, Morrissey was curious about developing an approach to “target solid tumors … like any tumor in a tissue that would present as a lump, like a breast cancer.” For Morrissey, these advanced forms of cancer are “where the need is the greatest.” Unlike other immune cells, the main role of macrophages is performing “phagocytosis,” in which they engulf and break down bacteria, viruses and other cellular debris. This unique behavior makes them an ideal tool for destroying tumors by essentially “nibbling the cancer cells to death.”

Aided by her expertise in the field of cancer cell biology, Morrissey is a passionate and imaginative worker who reminds us that being a scientist is about “staying curious and energized and focusing on problems that you think are really interesting and important.” Her creativity underlies the noteworthy work being done in her lab to understand macrophages, while previous studies have mainly utilized T cells, a different type of immune cell found in the body. Morrissey recognized that “if every therapy right now targets T cells, then there’s some cases where T cells just don’t work. For example, T cells don’t get into solid tumors very well.” 

While there has been a significant amount of progress on using T cells for immunotherapy, macrophages still require a deeper understanding of what drives their phagocytic behavior before they can be implemented as an effective form of cancer treatment. Scientists recognize the potential that macrophages hold for breaking down tumors, however, it is not well known what molecular signals actually trigger that function in macrophage cells. Providing this foundational knowledge has been a major motivation for Morissey, as she explained, “the gap is the molecular mechanism of the signaling pathways, how they actually work, and that’s what we’re trying to fill.”

Although the development of cell-based therapies has initiated a revolution in cancer treatment, it is important to note that it currently has a 25% success rate. Nonetheless, Morrissey asserts that “we really can increase the number of patients that are responding to cancer immunotherapy if we understand more about these signaling pathways and how the immune system can detect cancer and kill cancer … And strategies like the one in my lab, where we’re trying to engage different immune cell types or trying to understand these pathways better will help with that.”

These crucial, life-saving advances in biological research cannot be made without sufficient support and resources. In a time when massive funding cuts are assailing the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Morrissey stressed that “we can only do this research because we have funding from the NIH. And if we don’t have funding from the NIH, we can’t do this research.” Not only does scientific innovation require bold thinkers who are unafraid to explore uncharted territory, but it necessitates financial support to help bring their new ideas to life.

A version of this article appeared on p.8 of the May. 1, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.