MD, PhD
Champion Mitchell Distinguished Professorship, Pediatric Oncology
Co-Director, UNC Lineberger Immunotherapy Program
UNC-Chapel Hill
Immunology
Area of Interest
My scientific training is in hematology and cancer immunology. When I joined the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy directed by Dr. Malcolm Brenner, at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, in 1998, my interest was in developing therapies for Epstein-Barr-Virus (EBV)-associated diseases and malignancies. I first contributed to the development of clinical protocols for the treatment of severe chronic EBV infections and for the prevention/treatment of EBV-associated lymphomas that occur in immunosuppressed patients after solid organ transplant. I then developed and extended my work on T-cell based therapy approaches to target non-viral antigens that are overexpressed in cancer cells such as cancer testis antigens. I also worked on genetic modification strategies that help T-cells better traffic to tumors, and render them resistant to tumor-associated inhibitory mechanisms.
More recently, I have been interested in the gene modification of T-cells to redirect them to tumors by transgenic expression of alpha-betaTCRs or of chimeric tumor-specific receptors (CARs), in particular for hematological malignancies such as CD19+ leukemia/lymphomas and CD30+ Hodgkin’s lymphoma. These approaches are currently in clinical trials.
Since joining the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, I am the assistant director of the UNC Lineberger Immunotherapy Program. In addition to continue my interest in the preclinical development of cancer immunotherapy approaches for hematological and solid tumors, I provide support in writing protocols, developing standard operating procedures and training T-cell processing staff operating in our good manufacturing practices (GMP) facility in order to implement T-cell therapy clinical trials at University of North Carolina. I have acquired this expertise during my 17 years at Baylor, where I have facilitated the development and implementation of several T-cell therapy trials.
Awards and Honors
- Highly Cited Researchers (Top 1%), Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics, 2021, 2022, 2023
News and Stories
Investing in named professorships to attract and retain world-class faculty
Barbara Savoldo, MD, PhD, and Stephanie Wheeler, PhD, MPH, were recently approved as named distinguished professors, one of the highest honors a university bestows to a faculty member.
UNC researchers present at American Association for Cancer Research’s 115th Annual Meeting
Researchers and trainees from UNC and UNC Lineberger at will present more than 30 talks and participate in scientific and educational panels and discussions on the latest cancer research.
