WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WANE) — Xiaoping Bao, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, has improved upon traditional methods of producing off-the-shelf human immune cells that show strong antitumor activity and can be used to treat blood diseases and cancer.

A paper documenting the findings was published in Cell Reports, a peer-reviewed journal that aims to publish high-quality papers across the entire life sciences spectrum that focus on new biological insights.

Bao’s patent-pending method involves mass-producing neutrophils, the most abundant white blood cell type, and using them to effectively cross physiological barriers to infiltrate solid tumors.

The method was created in collaboration with Qing Deng, an associate professor at Purdue’s Department of Biological Sciences; Hal E. Broxmeyer, now deceased, at Indiana University’s School of Medicine; and Xiaojun Lian, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Penn State University.

“We developed a robust protocol for massive production of de novo neutrophils from human pluripotent stem cells,” Bao said.

The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization has applied Bao’s method for an international patent, and the process takes around 12 months according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.