Current Fellows
2023-2024 IM-TAG Program Postdoctoral Fellows
Felicia Cao, MD, PhD
Research Mentors: Barbara Savoldo, MD, PhD, and Natalie Grover, MD
Research Interests
I am currently a 2nd year hematology/oncology fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My research interest is in cellular therapies such as adoptive chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) based therapy and its applications against solid tumors. Thus far, while CAR-T has shown impressive success in the treatment of refractory leukemia and lymphoma, it has been much less effective against non-hematological malignancies. Thus, there is an unmet need to improve the efficacy of CAR-T therapy for solid tumors. My current clinical research project involves studying the kinetics of immune reconstitution and infection risk after CAR-T therapy for various types of malignancies.
Jose Martinez, MD, PhD
Research Mentors: Paul Armistead, MD, PhD, and Daniel Dominguez, PhD
Research Interests
I am currently a Hematology and Oncology fellow in the Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where my primary focus is on researching RNA regulation in hematologic cancers with the aim of improving patient outcomes. My current research is centered around unraveling the intricate connections between cancer mutations, dysregulated RNA processing, and resistance to treatment. I am actively investigating methods to target dysregulated RNA processing for the development of immune-based therapies. Specifically, I study how aberrant RNA splicing and translation resulting from splicing gene mutations lead to neoantigen production.