Alex Kim
Program: Immunology
Current advisor: Carl DeSelm, MD, PhD
Undergraduate university: University of California-Berkeley
Research summary
I am conducting my thesis work in the lab of Dr. Carl DeSelm. The lab focuses on developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-based cellular immunotherapies. While CAR T cells have been shown to be both safe and effective in treating various hematologic malignancies, they have shown less effectiveness against solid cancers. Solid cancers can undermine the effectiveness of these therapies by creating an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment that prevents immune cell infiltration and diminishes effector function of those cells that do penetrate into the tumors. My project aims to create CAR-antigen presenting cells designed to provoke an endogenous anti-tumor immune response, which will complement existing immunotherapies (CAR T cells, checkpoint inhibitors etc) in the treatment of solid human cancers. We are more specifically interested in seeing whether myeloid cells can be engineered to migrate more efficiently from tumors to tumor draining lymph nodes in order to bolster anti-tumor T cell responses, and whether this migratory phenotype might be combined with CAR engineering to improve cell therapies for cancer and beyond.
Graduate publications