Ty Miller Lab-From Single Cells to Cures

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of leaving a lasting positive impact on the world.

I grew up in a small rural town in Ohio, where science wasn’t something people did for a living. No one in my family had gone to a four-year college but I was fascinated by the idea of discovering something new. In college at Ohio State, I joined a cancer research lab and was hooked. I knew this was how I wanted to make my impact.

I came to Case Western Reserve for my medical school and PhD training because I believed that understanding both science and medicine would help me turn discoveries into real treatments.

I chose to work on a cancer called glioblastoma because it’s the worst of the worst - aggressive brain cancer with no effective therapy. If I could find something in the lab that worked, we could get it to patients quickly. During my PhD training, I spent six years developing new methods to find better drug targets. I also helped friends and their families navigate this disease - often with little hope to offer. Even in a top research lab, I couldn’t stop it.

After this experience, this disease became personal to me, and I knew I wanted to spend the time I have on this earth dedicated to curing glioblastoma. After years of research, I was convinced the most promising path is through active immunotherapy - we need to engineer the body’s own immune system to recognize and eliminate tumor cells. When I moved to Boston for residency and fellowship, I created a platform for both discovery and translation of new immunotherapy strategies.

Now back at Case Western Reserve, I lead a lab using this platform to create effective immunotherapies for brain tumor patients. In my lab, we use patient-tissue glioblastoma organoids. These are pieces of patient tumors directly from the operating room that we grow in a dish. They contain all of the complexity of the tumor, including the immune cells and blood vessels, giving us a much more accurate and scalable way to test treatments.

We’re also using cutting-edge single cell genomics - tools that let us understand the tumor with more resolution than we ever have before. We can map out how individual cells are behaving in the tumor and which ones are helping the cancer survive.

One of our key discoveries is that myeloid cells—immune cells that are supposed to protect the brain—are being hijacked by brain tumors. Instead of helping fight the tumor, they’re suppressing the ability of the immune system to attack the tumor. We’re developing new tools and strategies to reprogram or eliminate those cells.

If we can crack that barrier, we open the door for immunotherapies to finally be effective against this disease.

But to do this—to do it right--we need support. Every donation fuels the work that might become the next breakthrough. If you believe in the power of science to save lives, please consider making a gift to our work.

Click the give now button to make a gift. Help us make a lasting impact. Help us cure brain cancer. Thank you.

Tyler E. Miller, MD, PhD