I am a physician-scientist who has established a human translational research group that fosters the development of both laboratory immunologists, and clinical translational researchers. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) cures blood cancer via beneficial graft-v-tumor immunity. Our overall research goal is to augment GVT while preventing dertimental graft versus host disease (GVHD). The Miklos lab pioneered protein microarray technologies to disciiver clinically relevant allogeneic antibodies, especially those targeting H-Y antigens following sex mismatched transplantation. Our discovery that allogeneic HY antibodies develop in association with chronic GVHD revealed a critical B cell role in chronic GVHD pathogenesis and our clinical trials established cGVHD therapeutic benefits using anti-B cell drugs rituximab and ibrutinib. We developed high-throughput sequencing of the B and T cell immune receptor thereby enabling: 1) lymphoid disease quantification, 2) detailed B and T cell donor reconstitution kinetics, and 3) clonal analysis of antigen specific responses following allo-HCT.
Immunotherapy is revolutionizing cancer treatment and as the Stanford Clinical Cancer Cell Therapy program develops and evaluates the most promising cutting-edge cell therapies for cancer patients on a variety of clinical trials. Chimeric Antigen T Cell (CAR-T) therapy targets the patient's T lymphocytes to attack their cancer by infecting their own T cells to express chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) proteins that target and kill cancer cell expressing surface proteins. Thus far, the most successful CAR-T have targeted B cell antigen CD19, and ongoing trials are treating patients with relapsed/refractory Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) using this CAR19 therapy.