Bio
I am the Chief of Stanford BMT and Cell Therapy Program providing 600 cancer cell therapies annually. Our BMT-CT research group fosters the development of both laboratory immunologists, and clinical translational researchers. Our Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) research is optimizing graft content of CD34 HSC, conventional T lymphocyte, and regulatory T cell content in order to cures blood cancers via beneficial graft-v-tumor (GVT) immunity. Our overall research goal is to augment GVT while preventing detrimental graft versus host disease (GVHD). Our CAR-T research provide the most direct targeting of cancer and has dramatically helped patients with leukemia and Lymphoma already.
The Miklos lab pioneered protein microarray technologies to discover 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 Stanford Cancer Cell Therapy Program is developing and evaluating the most promising chimeric antigen T-cell (CAR-T) therapies. CAR-T genetically modifies the patient's T lymphocytes to target their cancer. Thus far, the most successful CAR-T have targeted B cell antigens CD19, CD20, CD22, and BCMA, and our ongoing trials are treating patients with relapsed/refractory leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.