Skip to main content

Paul Armistead, MD, PhD, is a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center member with a clinical interest in the application of stem cell transplantation and other cellular therapies in the treatment of hematologic malignancies including leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma, with a primary focus on acute myeloid leukemia (AML). His research interests are focused on cancer antigen discovery and the development of immunotherapeutics targeting these antigens.

MD, PhD
John William Pope Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Medical Director, Bone Marrow Transplant Program
Medical Director, Advanced Cellular Therapeutics Facility
Medical Directory, Translational Research
UNC-Chapel Hill
Immunology
Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program

Area of Interest

Bone marrow and stem cell transplantation, hematologic malignancies, cancer immunotherapy, cancer antigen discovery

Paul Armistead MD, PhD, is a physician scientist and a member of the UNC Program in Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy. He has a clinical interest in the application of stem cell transplantation and other cellular therapies in the treatment of hematologic malignancies including leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma, with a primary focus on acute myeloid leukemia (AML). His clinical research involves the evaluation of novel immunotherapies in the treatment of hematologic malignancies and the development of methods for the detection of minimal residual disease in AML patients.

Armistead’s laboratory interests are primarily in the area of cancer antigen discovery and the development of immunotherapeutics targeting these antigens. His research group has identified multiple leukemia antigens. In collaboration with other researchers at UNC, immunotherapeutics, both cellular therapies and vaccines, are being developed against two of the most promising targets. Continuing research focuses involve expanding the number of discovered antigens to enable the development of therapeutics that can treat increasing numbers of patients.

About Armistead Lab

The goal of our lab is to discover new leukemia antigens and develop methods for analyzing their ability to induce an immune response.

Minor histocompatibility antigens (mHAgs) are thought to play a significant role in donor-derived immunity in the setting of allogeneic transplant. The antigens result from the genetic differences, or cSNPs, between the donor and patient. If the donors immune system has never been exposed to a peptide antigen containing the patients cSNP the donors immune system can recognize the patients cSNP as foreign and mount an immune response. By applying this general concept, we have been able to identify 2 new mHAgs through a relatively fast multi-step screening process. While the process involves 4 steps 1) collecting a large cohort of donor and matched patient DNA samples, 2) ranking cSNP differences with respect to patient outcomes, 3) predicting antigens using binding algorithm software, 4) confirming mHAg-specific T cells in posttransplant patients using tetramers, the overall process is far faster and less expensive than traditional mHAg discovery methods. Our aim will be to use this general approach to identify mHAgs that are derived from hematopoietically restricted genes or genes expressed in leukemia stem cells. To do this we will use the same DNA samples in the original study, but will perform deep resequencing at the genes of interest to identify cSNP disparities associated with an immune response.

Additional studies will be performed to characterize the immune responses elicited by the mHAgs discovered. The first mHAg discovered in our initial study, T4A, has several characteristics that make it a good candidate antigen for targeted immunotherapy. The source protein, TRIM42, is present in leukemia, but not normal granulocytes. Apart from hematopoietic tissue, TRIM42 mRNA is only detectable in testis suggesting that the T4A epitope may not confer significant graft versus host disease. Our lab will investigate the biological function of TRIM42 in hematopoietic development and leukemogenesis. In collaboration with Dr. Glish and Dr. Jorgenson in the Department of Chemistry, we will also work on new HPLC/MS based methodologies to confirm the presence of the T4A peptide on leukemia, and hopefully discover other leukemia-associated antigens. We will also work on developing new assays to measure T4A mediated cytotoxicity using micropallet technology developed in the laboratory of Dr. Nancy Allbritton. By using these assays we hope to be able to simultaneously assess antigen-specific T cell number and their ability to kill antigen-presenting targets with subsequent single-cell cloning of the most active cytotoxic T cells. These studies will hopefully lead to the identification and characterization of new immune targets in leukemia.

Find publications on PubMed

Awards and Honors

  • Presenter, MD Anderson Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Research Forum, Houston, TX, 2008
  • Tufts Excellence in Teaching Award, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Boston, MA, 2005
  • Alpha Omega Alpha, 2001
  • MitchikoKuno Research Award, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1998
  • Sarah Kenan Merit Scholar, UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, 1996-1997
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 1995
  • Phi Eta Sigma, 1992
  • Morehead Scholar, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1991-1995

News and Stories


View all related posts