Zaia honored as first endowed chair in gene therapy
Photo: Fred LeeJohn Zaia
The endowed chair was established through a gift from committed donors Aaron and Edith Miller. It will support Zaia’s research into the development of gene therapies to treat HIV, cancer and other serious illnesses.
“Aaron Miller was a longtime City of Hope supporter who recognized the need to support research that moves lab research into the clinic to help patients with serious disease,” said Richard Jove, Ph.D., director of Beckman Research Institute. “John Zaia is leading clinical trials of groundbreaking gene therapies for HIV and cytomegalovirus that were developed by his scientific colleagues here at City of Hope.”
Zaia oversees clinical trials of a variety of potential treatments. For one, he and Amrita Krishnan, M.D., are investigating autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation for the treatment of HIV-positive patients with AIDS-related lymphoma.
Krishnan, director of the Multiple Myeloma Program in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, has helped to establish autologous transplant as a standard treatment for high-risk lymphomas. In this therapy, physicians harvest a patient’s healthy blood stem cells, then give the patient chemotherapy to destroy cancerous blood cells, and finally reinfuse the stem cells back into the body.
HIV-positive patients who undergo the treatment may see their lymphoma go into remission, but the underlying HIV infection still remains. City of Hope researchers want to change that.
Zaia’s colleague John J. Rossi, Ph.D., the Lidow Family Research Chair and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology, developed a method that may block HIV using gene therapy. Rossi engineers patients’ stem cells, plugging three HIV-fighting RNAs into the cells so they will defend against HIV after the cells are reinfused into a patient.
A clinical trial of the technique is under way. Preliminary data presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology indicated that the engineered stem cells successfully engrafted in all participating patients, and patients’ bodies are producing new blood cells that express the anti-HIV RNA and may provide HIV resistance as expected. Researchers hope further studies and development of this gene therapy will lead to a cure for HIV.
Zaia acknowledged the importance of donors to City of Hope research.
“It’s an honor to receive this endowed chair that was spurred by the generosity of the Miller family and its commitment to furthering medical science in the pursuit of curing disease,” said Zaia. “Research has revealed the genetic underpinnings of many diseases such as HIV and cancer. We believe gene therapy will be critical to treating many of these diseases.”
Aaron Miller was an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. For more than 65 years, he ran the business he started in 1926, when he discovered how to reclaim and recycle textiles. Working closely with Johnson & Johnson and other leading textile manufacturers, he created new markets and uses for a variety of textile byproducts.
He and his wife, Edith Miller, resided in East Orange, N.J. Shortly after Edith Miller’s death, Aaron Miller was introduced to City of Hope by his daughter, Roz Romanow, who is a longtime member of the Southern California Gift of Life Chapter for City of Hope. Aaron Miller was a steadfast supporter of City of Hope until his death in 1998.