Robby Bowles, a University of Utah biomedical engineering professor, is tackling one of the greatest mysteries of all time in his lab: what is the mechanism underlying back pain?
If you’ve ever visited the doctor to try to get to the bottom of the nagging ache in your back, you know there’s rarely a simple answer. “One of the problems to treating back pain is that physicians don't always know where the pain is coming from and what's causing it,” Bowles said. “We have two questions in the lab. One is to understand what is causing the back pain, and the other is how to develop treatments for back pain.”
Bowles’s lab uses CRISPR—a technology used to modify DNA—as its primary tool to develop gene therapies that modulate pain signaling or regrow tissue. Bowles was introduced to CRISPR while doing postdoctoral research into how back pain works at Duke. “I got lucky,” he said. “When the CRISPR craze blew up, one of the primary researchers was at Duke. I asked my advisor if I could learn some gene therapy, and she suggested I learn CRISPR.”
It seems like his luck and good timing will continue after the Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug developed using CRISPR in December.
A couple years ago, Bowles and his lab stumbled upon a particular gene of interest, ZNF865, in a CRISPR screen that they’ve determined could play a vital role in cell survival. “Long story short it regulates senescence, which is incredibly important in aging and has applications in musculoskeletal disease,” Bowles said.
By regulating this gene with CRISPR, the cell will come out of senescence—or a state where the cells stop performing their main functions and start pumping out inflammatory cytokines—and start producing cartilage.
The main draw of this approach and potential treatment is that it can keep an impacted disc from further degeneration while dampening the pain signals without opioids or complicated surgeries.
“Our techniques are mostly injection based to try and make it easier on the patient and reduce opioid use,” Bowles said. “We've developed different strategies that can be applied for different patients because back pain patients have a myriad of conditions.”
The lab is also investigating this gene’s potential for treating neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. “We're still applying it to musculoskeletal conditions because we've tested in disc cells and all the things that we're used to working with,” Bowles said. “But it looks like the lab is about to branch out into more areas of research.”
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Helping people with science
Bowles was introduced to tech transfer in graduate school. His advisor involved him in filing patent applications and meeting with potential investors for the tissue engineered intervertebral disc they were working on. This early introduction helped shape the path of his career and set him up for success when he arrived at the U.
“From the moment I showed up on campus, it wasn’t long before I reached out to the Technology Licensing Office. I knew I wanted to file patents. I knew I wanted to protect the things that we're doing,” Bowles said.
Now as a professor, he hopes to give his students a leg up just like his graduate school advisor did for him. In his lab, his students are fully involved in the tech transfer process starting from the first invention disclosure.
For students not involved in a lab like his, Bowles suggested a few things to start learning about IP protection, entrepreneurship and more.
“If you are in a lab that doesn't seem to have that commercialization culture, go to your advisor and see if they are interested in patenting any of the technologies,” he said.
Bowles encouraged students to look outside the lab to gain this experience. “Seek out entrepreneurial or FDA regulatory courses offered in your program. These are logistics things that you don't think about when you're in your lab developing your stuff, but you're going to run into them and they can stop your technology in the tracks if you haven't thought about it.”
Developing the mindset and focus on moving a technology from the lab to the market has helped Bowles focus his research, which is crucial with a versatile technology like CRISPR. “For me, when I'm picking projects, I try and make sure that somewhere in my brain is the question, ‘Do I think this has the potential to help someone?’” Bowles said. “One of the things that drove me to this field was the desire to help people. I really, really want to do something that makes people's lives better.”
