Grace Qi
Program: Unspecified
Current advisor:
Undergraduate university: Duke University
Research summary
Laser-interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) is a surgical thermal ablation technique that confers a survival benefit in clinical trials of recurrent glioblastoma (GBM) and in orthotopic mouse models of GBM. It is thought to achieve this by breaking down the blood brain barrier and allowing increased infiltration of neutrophils and macrophages that recognize and attack tumor cells. My project aims to characterize the changes that occur in T cell populations, after the initial innate immune cell infiltrate post-LITT, that may limit its efficacy. This is important to understand since outcomes may be improved by combining LITT with existing immunotherapies that reinvigorate anti-tumor T cell responses. Previous work suggests that T cells acquire an “exhausted” phenotype in settings of chronic antigen stimulation, such as a tumor microenvironment, but it is unclear if a similar picture is present in the setting of LITT. My work aims to characterize the antigen specificity, cytokine expression, and costimulatory markers of GBM-infiltrating T cells.
Graduate publications