We Engineer Immune Cells to Cure Cancer
Our goal
We study chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells - human T cells that have been genetically modified to attack cancer.
CAR T cell therapy represents a major advance in science and medicine and has transformed the lives of many patients who would otherwise not be alive today. However, there is still much work to be done to improve upon the success of this treatment. Our lab is interested in the following questions:
– How can we improve outcomes of CAR T cell therapy?
At present the long-term survival rates after CAR T cell therapy are in the range of 30-40%. On the one hand, these are exceptional results for patients with advanced cancer; on the other hand, there is still much room for improvement.
– How can we make CAR T cell therapy more widely available?
CAR T cell products are clinically available for blood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma, but these constitute only a small fraction of human cancers. If we could develop a revolutionary product such as CAR T cells for other types of cancers, we could vastly increase the impact of this therapy.
Our PI
Miriam Kim, MD
