Abeer's early life and education

Born in Saudi Arabia, Abeer developed a passion for medical science at a very young age. This was in part inspired by her mother who was herself a chemist and always encouraged Abeer to watch TV programmes about medicine. Unlike her mother, her father did not have an university education, but always urged her to consider a career in science. Because Abeer really enjoyed learning about anatomy and physiology she set her sights on becoming a doctor. Unable to get into medical school, Abeer instead took a bachelor’s degree in animal biology at a university in Saudi Arabia and then got a scholarship to go to the United States to do a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. She then did a doctorate in biochemical engineering at University College London.

For Abeer biochemical engineering was perfect, because it gave her the opportunity to fulfil her dream of working in the medical field. She also liked the multidisciplinary nature of the subject because it combines biology, chemistry and physics. More than anything she saw biomedical engineering as a way to improve cancer treatment. Her desire to advance such drugs was driven by how much suffering her mother went through after she was diagnosed with cancer in her forties. Losing her mother when she was just 26 years of age, Abeer had witnessed up front just how tough it had been for her mother to go through chemotherapy. Starting her hunt for an alternative means to treat cancer during her master’s thesis, Abeer continued this pursuit for her doctorate.

Harnessing the immune system to treat cancer

For her doctorate Abeer decided to focus her attention on finding ways to optimise immunotherapy, a type of treatment designed to harness the body’s natural immune system to combat cancer. In particular she concentrated her energies on Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy. First pioneered in the 1990s, the treatment involves extracting T cells from a patient, a type white blood cell produced by stem cells in the bone marrow, and then infusing them back into the patient after they have been genetically modified to enhance their capacity to target and destroy the patient’s tumour cells.

By the time Abeer started her doctorate, in 2017, CAR-T therapy had been demonstrated to be highly effective for treating leukaemia and lymphoma. But it still had the capacity to cause side effects that were potentially fatal. In addition, it remained highly expensive because each treatment needed to be tailored to each individual patient, a process that can take several weeks to complete. Manufacturing the treatment is highly complex and dependent on a largely manual or semi-automated process. Not only does this mean quality can vary between batches, but it hinders the ability to upscale production and reduce costs which limits how many patients can be treated.

Transforming cell preservation methods

In order to improve CAR-T therapy, Abeer decided to focus her attention on the method used to preserve live T cells. This is important because all T cells collected from patients, unless they are used immediately, quickly deteriorate. The shelf-life of such cells is minimal, ranging from 30 minutes to a few hours depending on their application. The challenge is not so great where collection and treatment sites are located either in the same clinic or close by one another. But this is frequently not the case. Cells usually take time to be processed and transported to where they can be genetically modified. Even short journeys can endanger their quality because the cells are highly temperature-sensitive.

Until now the most common method used to prevent T cells from deteriorating has been cryopreservation. Routinely used to transport and store biological samples, cryopreservation makes it possible to freeze cells at very low temperatures for an extended period of time. This is done by adding certain chemicals, known as cryoprotectants. While an effective method, cryopreservation is not a perfect solution. One of the key challenges is that ice crystals can sometimes form inside the cells. This can cause damage to the cells when they get thawed and thereby reduce their efficacy as a therapy. Similarly, cryoprotectants can be toxic which can affect their function.

For her doctorate, Abeer studied a number of alternatives to cryopreservation, including hypothermic preservation. Generally used to prolong the shelf-life of biological material for only short periods of time during distribution and delivery, hypothermic preservation has the advantage that it enables cells to be preserved at low room temperatures and is relatively inexpensive. Abeer set out to find ways to improve the technique so that it could be used for CAR-T therapy.

Just as Abeer was completing her doctoral thesis, she attended a conference where she started chatting to Emma Buick, a scientist from a small biotechnology company called Life Sciences Group. She was fascinated to learn that the company, in partnership with researchers at Coventry University, was developing a new cell storage and shipment medium, called CellShip, which offered a way forward not only for CAR-T therapy but also for other types of cell and gene therapies.

What Abeer found attractive about the new medium was it offered a much simpler and cheaper method to preserve cells at room temperature and eliminated the need for toxic additives. Importantly, it opened up the possibility of transporting cells without the need for using expensive dry ice or refrigeration. Another important factor was it reduced the number of steps needed to both prepare the cells to be transported and then recovered at the other end. Encouragingly, the new medium appeared to work well with a variety of cell types, paving the way to making the delivery of personalised treatments much cheaper and more accessible.

The leap from academia into industry

After the conference, Emma invited Abeer to come over to LSG to discuss the CellShip project further. This she did shortly after she gained her doctorate. The timing of Abeer’s visit proved highly fortuitous because the company was then in the midst of looking to hire a senior scientist. Immediately warming to the team at LSG, Abeer agreed to be interviewed for the position and was accepted to start In October 2022.

Abeer has very much enjoyed the transition from academic to working in a company environment. What she particularly likes is it has given her much more time to carry out laboratory work. By contrast, when she was in academia, she always had to juggle her laboratory work alongside teaching students. In addition, she has welcomed the fact that everyone in the company works in a shared office space which has given her the opportunity to mix with lots of other people who are able to teach her new skills. For example, she likes working alongside the marketing team who look to her to explain how the different products work so that they can pass on the information to customers. She also appreciates having contact with the quality control team who have taught her a lot about regulation.

Tips for pursuing a biomedical career

Passionate about biomedical engineering, Abeer advises anyone looking to pursue a career in the area to spend a lot of time reading around the area so that they can get a sense of what interests them. The key thing is to find something that they feel passionate about because this will help motivate them to move forward and put in the hours that are needed.

She also says it is important to set clear goals. Another key characteristic Abeer identifies in people who succeed is having strong management skills. She also emphasises the importance of not being afraid to ask questions. In her experience asking questions has often saved her a lot of precious time in terms of searching for the right information and resolving challenges.

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This article was written by Dr Lara Marks based on an interview with Dr Abeer Al Hubaysh on 9th June 2023.