By james art MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – Sharks don’t usually come to mind when you think of saving lives. But at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, students and faculty learn from sharks every day, leading to advances in cancer research.
Six male nurse sharks live in a tank in a lab on the UW-Madison campus. Originally from the Florida Keys, the sharks were relocated to Wisconsin to help fight human cancer.
“I like being able to say I work with them,” said Jaden West, a UW-Madison student.
West says he has been working with these sharks since they were brought to campus about three years ago.
“It’s definitely one of the coolest animals you can use in the field, not one you expect when you’re not a wildlife biologist at all,” he said.
Using sharks, West studies cancer drug delivery mechanisms.
“We can use these shark antibodies to help traffic these drugs to the tumor and less of it in the body, so that many of the negative effects of chemotherapy can be somewhat reduced,” he said.
Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Department of Radiology at UW-Madison, Dr. Aaron Lebo says they immunize sharks against various types of human cancer.
“We’re using their immune systems to generate antibodies that will then be used to fight different types of cancer,” he said.
Cancers ranging from breast cancer to prostate cancer, melanoma and lung cancer.
“It’s just like getting a shot against COVID-19 or a flu shot,” Lebo said. “A simple injection under the shark’s skin and then over time the shark’s immune system mounts an immune response to that protein and develops antibodies against the protein.”
From there, they take blood from the shark and analyze it in the laboratory. But at the same time, students and undergraduates alike are learning from LeBeau and the Sharks.
“So many people were able to come together and use sharks as a kind of focal point around which to focus our cancer treatment efforts,” West said.
In the past three years with the sharks, LeBeau says the research has been “pretty successful.”
“We make new discoveries every day,” he said. “This is the only lab of its kind in the world developing shark antibody therapies for cancer.”
These research findings are being used to advance the UW Carbon Cancer Center.
“It was really cool to see how passionate people are, who are usually always passionate about cancer, but have something cutting-edge and a lot of fun,” West added.
LeBeau adds that they have identified some shark antibodies against COVID-19 and have an antibody that works against every variant of COVID. They also used the sharks to generate antibodies against proteins found in Alzheimer’s disease.
“We even developed an antibody against fentanyl,” LeBeau added.
LeBeau says there are currently exciting projects underway for both lung and breast cancer, which LeBeau hopes will have their findings ready for clinical trials in five years.
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