BE: Seminar on Harnessing Nanoscale Cellular Communication for Designing Next-Generation Therapeutics by Dr. Tanmoy Saha

Speaker: Tanmoy Saha, MSc, PhD.
Instructor at Harvard Medical School
Associate Bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Date: 21st August 2025
Time: 10.00 AM
Venue: GF – 22, TCS Smart X Hub (TSH) Building

Title: Harnessing Nanoscale Cellular Communication for Designing Next-Generation Therapeutics
Abstract: Cellular communication plays a critical role in physiology. Aberrant intercellular communication underlies disease progression. For example, cancer cells communicate with neighboring cells to exchange organelles, proteins, metabolites, and ions, which helps them gain survival advantages. I am interested in studying communication at the subcellular and cellular levels, such as: (i) transmembrane ionic communication, (ii) extracellular protein-mediated communication, and (iii) intercellular nanoscale physical communication.
Cells maintain an ionic homeostasis with the extracellular environment using ion channels and transporters. I have developed a variety of artificial chloride channels (ACT). The ACTs are robust supramolecular architectures made up of small molecules. This helps in a better understanding of ion transport activity and modulating ionic communication in cells. I introduced the first-ever example of ACT, which can induce apoptosis in cancer cells by disrupting ionic homeostasis.
Cancer cells communicate with immune cells via extracellular proteins, known as immune checkpoints. They send kill-me-not signals to T cells and macrophages. Immunotherapy has made a paradigm shift in cancer treatment by blocking such interactions, but effective in less than 30% of patients. I have introduced immunoengineered nanotherapeutics that serve as a unified platform to deliver a combination of pharmacological drugs and biologics to cancer cells. The bifunctional nanotherapeutic can activate both innate and adaptive immunity by blocking PDL1 and CD47 immune checkpoints. This has shown increased therapeutic efficacy in syngeneic lung cancer, which is not responsive to traditional immunotherapy.
Furthermore, we investigated a novel mechanism of immune evasion by cancer cells through nanoscale physical communication. We have used high-resolution electron and optical microscopy to identify that the cancer cells hijack mitochondria from T cells using nanoscale tubular communication. The transfer of mitochondria energetically empowers the cancer cells and increases their proliferation, metastasis, and drug resistance. In contrast, the T cell population depletes because of the lack of energy production. Blocking the nanotube-mediated mitochondria transfer by pharmacological inhibitors has shown potential therapeutic implications in increasing intrinsic T cell immune response and elevating therapeutic efficacy in combination with traditional immunotherapy. Moreover, we have shown elevating the immune response by supercharging T cells with exogenous mitochondria. Hence, a mechanistic understanding of cellular communication, the development of novel therapeutic strategies, and delivering them to the specific cells are critical for designing better therapeutic strategies in cancer and other chronic diseases.
About the Speaker: Dr. Saha is an entry-level faculty member at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Bioengineer at Mass General Brigham. He has completed an MSc from Visva Bharati University and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune. Dr. Saha’s major research direction is to develop tools to study cellular communication and introduce novel therapeutic strategies. He has published his research in prestigious journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Science Advances, and J. Am. Chem. Soc., Cell, PNAS, etc. He has received independent research grants from the Department of Defense and the Melanoma Research Alliance and many awards, including the best thesis award, Scholar in Training Award, etc.