DVM, PhD, MS
Associate Professor, Cancer Biology
North Carolina A&T State University
Immunology
Area of Interest
My research interests encompass cancer immunology, immunotherapy, and the use of oncolytic viruses and cancer vaccines to treat cancers.
As a doctoral student, I received training in virus-host immune interactions and viral pathogenesis. Later, as a postdoctoral trainee at the University of Helsinki, I was trained in tumor immunology, oncolytic adenoviruses, adoptive T-cell therapy, and animal models of cancer under the supervision of Dr. Akseli Hemminki. To further pursue my interest in oncolytic immunovirotherapy, I joined Dr. Samuel Rabkin’s lab at Harvard Medical School in 2013. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, I received hands-on training in engineering and using oncolytic herpes simplex virus (oHSV)-based immunotherapy for the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM). Now, as an independent investigator, first at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Pharmacy, then at California Northstate University College of Pharmacy (CNUCOP), and currently at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), I continue my research on GBM.
Over the past few years, I have become interested in expanding my research program to include triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) for several reasons:
- Like GBM, metastatic TNBC is a difficult to treat and deadly disease with no effective treatment available
- Based on our preliminary data, in situ vaccines, such as armed oHSVs, have emerged as ideal vaccines to target and eliminate metastasized tumor cells by inducing tumor antigen-specific antitumor immunity
- Expanding the research program to include metastatic TNBC with the aim to bring synergy and build a new research infrastructure at NC A&T with the help of established investigators like Dr. Rabkin
During my postdoctoral training in Europe and Harvard, and as an independent investigator, I developed a strong collaborative research program with clinician-scientists with expertise in immunotherapy clinical trials (Dr. Howard Kaufman, Massachusetts General Hospital, MGH), oHSV engineering and characterization (Dr. Wakimoto, MGH), and preclinical (Dr. Rabkin, Harvard Medical School, HMS) and clinical (Dr. Robert Martuza, HMS) oHSV immunovirotherapy.
Since joining NC A&T, I have developed collaborations with both on- and off-campus investigators. These include cancer immunology (Dr. Holloman, NC A&T), TNBC biology (Dr. Rorie, NC A&T), breast cancer virology (Dr. Muganda, NC A&T), synthetic virus constructs and molecular biology (Dr. Newman, NC A&T), neuroscience (Drs. Cannady and Niere, NC A&T), evolutionary biology (Drs. Graves, NC A&T), and radiation oncology (Dr. Nolan, NC State University).
