Okada Lab
Principal Investigator: Hideho Okada
Institution: University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
Abstract The ultimate success of immunotherapy for brain malignancies, such as malignant glioma, will require integration of in-depth understanding of immunology with solutions for the following long-standing challenges: 1) paucity and heterogeneous expression of glioma-specific antigens; 2) on-target off-tumor toxicity and exhaustion of therapeutic T lymphocytes, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells; 3) immunological privilege of the CNS and 4) immunosuppression involving tumor, neuronal, and immune cells. My laboratory has contributed to critical discoveries in these areas and integrated our findings into novel immunotherapy clinical trials for glioma patients. In the current proposal, I will enhance my research by mobilizing multiple immune mechanisms. To this end, I will collaborate with an outstanding group of investigators whose diverse expertise in multi-disciplinary areas complements my own in brain tumor immunology as the central component and apply a wide variety of resources available at UCSF and collaborators to one overarching program. I will evaluate the overarching hypothesis that the integration of novel cell-engineering and antigen-targeting approaches w…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R35NS142982-01: Preclinical development of breakthrough immunotherapy for brain tumors (2026)
- 5P50CA097257-24: Project 3: Novel B-SYNC T cell therapy with CNS-specific expression of CAR as a safe and effective therapy for glioblastoma (2026)
- 5R35NS105068-08: Preclinical development of breakthrough immunotherapy for brain tumors (2025)
- 5U19CA264338-05: Development of novel synNotch CART cell therapy in adult patients with recurrent EGFRvIII+ glioblastoma (2025)
- 5P50CA097257-23: Project 3: Novel B-SYNC T cell therapy with CNS-specific expression of CAR as a safe and effective therapy for glioblastoma (2025)
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