Suyoun Choi
Program: Cancer Biology
Current advisor: Rotating in the lab of Carl DeSelm, MD, PhD
Undergraduate university: Stanford University
Research summary
CAR cell therapies have the potential to improve numerous disease of the CNS, such as aggressive brain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). During this rotation, I worked collaboratively on a project to develop CAR DCs for glioblastoma, as well as CAR macrophages for AD. The CAR DC project, which is in collaboration with Albert Kim’s Lab, will test whether a CD40 signaling CAR DC injected into an SB28 tumor improves antitumor response and overall survival. The CAR macrophage project, which is in collaboration with Jin-Moo Lee’s lab, will test whether an amyloid targeting CAR macrophage, which also secretes a Tau repressor, successfully represses intracellular Tau production in neighboring cells within the CNS. I studied study how the sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) transporter SPNS2 promotes survival of pediatric AML cells with NUP98 rearrangements (NUP98r), and whether this mechanism relies on the stimulation of the S1P receptor or the modulation of the intracellular ratio of S1P to ceramide
Graduate publications