Gheath Alatrash, D.O., Ph.D.

Patients with metastatic lung cancer cannot be cured with currently available therapies. A type of immunotherapy called chimeric antigen receptor CAR-T cell therapy has the potential to treat patients with such advanced disease. CAR-T cell therapy has revolutionized our approach to the treatment of blood cancers. However the efficacy of CAR T-cells in patients with solid tumor malignancies such as lung cancer has yet to be fully established. We will study a biological process called fucosylation, which adds fucose sugar groups to cell surface proteins, thereby increasing their affinity to bind to certain molecules in tumor tissues. Our goal is to determine the effects of fucosylation on CAR-T cells that target a lung cancer molecule called EGFR. Our findings will allow us to obtain preclinical data that will facilitate future clinical trials evaluating anti-tumor activity of CAR-T cells in lung cancer.