Assistant Professor of Immunology in Pediatrics, member of the Meyer Cancer Center and of the Drukier Institute of Children's Health at Weill Cornell, and member researcher at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
MERIT Award from the National Cancer Institute
Interrogating and targeting co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory molecules in CAR T-cell Therapies
Dr. Hamieh has received a five-year, $3.5 million grant with a two-year extension to develop next-generation CAR T-cell therapies that are more durable, effective against resistant tumors and able to treat a wider range of cancers. The MERIT award, “Method for Extending Research In Time,” gives highly accomplished and promising early-career investigators longer-term grant support.
To create a CAR-T immunotherapy, researchers remove T cells from a patient's blood, genetically engineer them to recognize the cancer and then return the cells to the body. However, the engineered immune cells often do not remain active long enough to eliminate the cancer.
Dr. Hamieh’s lab has found that CAR-T cells can display or acquire ligand molecules that act like "off switches," weakening the cells' cancer-fighting abilities. Tumors also surround themselves with signals that suppress immune cells, further impairing CAR-T cell function.
His lab will investigate how these inhibitory signals from cancer cells affect CAR-T cells and whether they contribute to treatment failure. The researchers are also engineering novel synthetic receptors designed to turn these normally suppressive messages into signals that boost CAR T-cell activity, survival and persistence. Ultimately, this research aims to expand the reach and efficacy of adoptive cell therapy for patients with cancer.