Dhodapkar Lab
Principal Investigator: Madhav V Dhodapkar
Institution: Fred Hutch Cancer Center (Seattle, WA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
ABSTRACT Curative therapy for multiple myeloma remains elusive despite remarkable advances in drug therapy, biologics and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Adoptive cell therapy using T cells modified by gene transfer to express synthetic chimeric antigen receptors (CAR-T) that retarget specificity to a surface molecule expressed on myeloma cells is an exciting advance and has been highly effective for reducing tumor burden and inducing complete responses in a fraction of patients with refractory disease. Although the initial responses to CAR-T are impressive, relapses are frequent and heterogeneity in the expression of target antigens on the tumor and lack of CAR-T persistence have been identified as underlying causes for disease recurrence. The premise of this proposal is that these barriers can be overcome by advanced approaches to T cell engineering. We will design novel synthetic hybrid T cell receptors that have markedly greater Ag sensitivity compared to CAR-T and simultaneously target more than one MM antigen to prevent escape of tumor cells expressing low levels of or lacking a single antigen. A new approach that instructs memory and stemness transcriptional a…
Active NIH Awards
- 5P01CA018029-50: Engineering Effective T cell Immunity to Multiple Myeloma (2026)
- 5R01CA289978-03: Improving immune modulation for smoldering myeloma (2026)
- 4UH3CA290302-03: Targeting microbial triggers of gammopathy for immunoprevention (2026)
- 7R01CA289978-02: Improving immune modulation for smoldering myeloma (2025)
- 7UG3CA290302-02: Targeting microbial triggers of gammopathy for immunoprevention (2025)
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