Devin Corrigan received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Spanish from Binghamton University in 2019. While at Binghamton University, he studied the mechanisms of persistence and potential treatments for P. aeruginosa biofilms under Drs Light and Boyko. After graduation, he joined the lab of Dr. Achkar at Albert Einstein College of Medicine to study the host immune response to M. tuberculosis infection. Here he studied the human and non-human primate antibody responses to Mtb to improve diagnostic testing and further our understanding of antibodies as correlates of protection to activation of Mtb and progression to disease. He started in the PhD program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the fall of 2021, and joined the Zang lab in July 2022. In the Zang lab he is working on understanding and targeting new immune checkpoint pathways.

Publications:

Ren X*, Corrigan D*, Zang X. Protocol for evaluating anti-tumor activity of KIR3DL3 blockade in an NK cell-based xenogeneic lung tumor model. STAR Protocols, 3:101818. doi: 10.1016/j.xpro, 2022 (*Co-first author)

Ren X, Peng M, Xing P, Wei Y, Galbo PM, Corrigan D, Wang H, Su Y, Dong X, Sun Q, Li Y, Zhang X, Edelmann W, Zheng D, Zang X. Blockade of the immunosuppressive KIR2DL5-PVR pathway elicits potent human NK cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 132:e163620. doi: 10.1172/JCI163620, 2022

Corrigan DT, Ishida E, Chatterjee D, Lowary TL, Achkar JM. Monoclonal antibodies to lipoarabinomannan/arabinomannan – Characteristics and implications for Tuberculosis research. Trends in Microbiology, accepted

Ishida E, Corrigan DT, Malonis RJ, Hofmann D, Chen T, Amin AG, Joe M, Lowary TL, Lai JR, Achkar JM. Monoclonal antibodies from humans with Mycobacterium tuberculosis exposure or latent infection recognize distinct arabinomannan epitopes. Communications Biology, 4:1181. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02714-w, 2021.

Anne Tranberg Madsen received her PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark. During her PhD, she studied the clinical applications of circulating tumor DNA in lung cancer and melanoma during targeted therapy and checkpoint inhibition. Furthermore, she studied mechanisms of acquired resistance to targeted therapies in in vitro cell models of human lung cancer. She joined the Zang lab in November 2019 as a postdoctoral research fellow supported by Thanks to Scandinavia/Borge endowment (co-supervised by Drs. Mark Schoenberg and Xingxing Zang), and is currently studying novel immune checkpoints.

Publications:

Madsen AT, Hojbjerg JA, Sorensen BS, Winther-Larsen A. Day-to-day and within-day biological variation of cell-free DNA. EBioMedicine, 49:284-290, 2019

Hojbjerg JA, Madsen AT, Schmidt HH, Sorensen SF, Stougaard M, Meldgaard P, Sorensen BS. Intra-individual variation of circulating tumor DNA in lung cancer patients. Molecular Oncology, 13:2098-2106, 2019

Demuth C*, Winther-Larsen A*, Madsen AT, Meldgaard P, Sorensen BS. A method for treatment monitoring using circulating tumour DNA in cancer patients without targetable mutations. Oncotarget, 9:31066-31076, 2018. *contributed equally

Demuth C, Madsen AT, Weber B, Wu L, Meldgaard P, Sorensen BS. The T790M resistance mutation in EGFR is only found in cfDNA from erlotinib-treated NSCLC patients that harbored an activating EGFR mutation before treatment. BMC Cancer, 18:191, 2018

Demuth C, Andersen MN, Jakobsen KR, Madsen AT, Sorensen BS. Increased PD-L1 expression in erlotinib-resistant NSCLC cells with MET gene amplification is reversed upon MET-TKI treatment. Oncotarget, 8:68221-68229, 2017

Winther-Larsen A, Demuth C, Fledelius J, Madsen AT, Hjorthau K, Meldgaard P, Sorensen BS. Correlation between circulating mutant DNA and metabolic tumour burden in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients. British Journal of Cancer, 117:704-709, 2017

Christopher Nishimura graduated from the University of Rochester where he earned his B.S. in Neuroscience. While at Rochester he worked in the lab of Stephen Dewhurst studying the pathogenesis of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. After graduation he moved to Houston, Texas to work in the lab of Caroline Arber Barth in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine. There, his work focused on improving the anti-tumor efficacy of TCR-based T-cell therapies. Currently Christopher is a student in the MSTP program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He joined the Zang lab in July 2019 and is developing new CAR T-cell based immunotherapies for the treatment of solid cancer. Christopher received F30 Individual Predoctoral Fellowship Award from NIH in 2021.

Publications:

Ren X, Li Y, Nishimura CD, Zang X. Crosstalk between the B7/CD28 and EGFR pathways: Mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities. Genes & Diseases, 9:1181-1193, 2022

Nishimura CD, Pulanco MC, Cui W, Lu L, Zang X. PD-L1 and B7-1 cis-interaction: New mechanisms in immune checkpoints and immunotherapies. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 27:207-219, 2021

Nishimura CD, Brenner DA, Mukherjee M, Hirsch RA, Ott L, Wu M, Liu H, Dakhova O, Orange JS, Brenner MK, Lin CY, Arber C. c-MPL provides tumor-targeted T-cell receptor transgenic T cells with costimulation and cytokine signals. Blood, 130:2739-2749, 2017

Nishimura C, Polesskaya O, Dewhurst S, Silva JN. Quantification of cerebral vascular architecture using two-photon microscopy in a mouse model of HIV-induced neuroinflammation. Journal of Visualized Experiments. 107: e53582, doi:10.3791/53582, 2016

Marc Pulanco earned his M.S. and B.S. in Biology from California State University Long Beach in 2018 and 2015 respectively. There, he worked in Dr. Deborah A. Fraser’s lab studying the role of complement protein, C1q, of the innate immune system in atherosclerosis. As an undergraduate, he studied the effect of C1q on macrophage foam cell survival and the anti-apoptotic mechanisms involved. For his master, he examined the effect of C1q on lipid metabolism of macrophage foam cells to promote their survival. Marc joined the PhD program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2018 with the intention of studying immunology in any disease to develop novel immunotherapies. He joined the Zang lab in July 2019 and is investigating the therapeutic potential of new immune checkpoint members in urothelial cancer, graft-versus-host disease, and type 1 diabetes.

Publications:

John P, Pulanco MC, Galbo PM, Wei Y, Ohaegbulam KC, Zheng D, Zang X. The immunecheckpoint B7x expands tumor-infiltrating Tregs and promotes resistance to anti-CTLA-4 therapy. Nature Communications, 13:2506. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30143-8, 2022

Nishimura CD*, Pulanco MC*, Cui W, Lu L, Zang X. PD-L1 and B7-1 cis-interaction: New mechanisms in immune checkpoints and immunotherapies. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 27:207-219, 2021 (*Co-first author)

Bortz RH, III, Wong AC, Grodus MG, Recht HS, Pulanco MC, Lasso G, Anthony SJ, Mittler E, Jangra RK, Chandran K. A virion-based assay for glycoprotein thermostability reveals keydeterminants of filovirus entry and its inhibition. Journal of Virology, 94:e00336-20, 2020

Pulanco MC, Cosman J, Ho MM, Huynh J, Fing K, Turcu J, Fraser DA. Complement Protein C1q Enhances Macrophage Foam Cell Survival and Efferocytosis. Journal of Immunology, 198: 472-480, 2017

Alex completed medical school at the University of Buenos Aires, in Argentina where he also worked as an instructor in immunology, virology, pharmacology and physical diagnosis. He also did basic lab research work studying the cytotoxic effects of NK-cells in endometriosis. He then moved to the United States and worked at Dr. Warren Pear’s laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania on Notch1 and NF-kappa B in T-cell development. He continued his research at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied the role of ATM in the phosphorylation of Ku70 in DNA damage response. Later, at the University of California at Davis, he studied the biochemical mechanisms of DNA homologous recombination and showed that RAD52 mediates second 3’-end capture and double Holliday junction formation with Dr. Stephen Kowalczykowski. He then started his residency in internal medicine at the Caritas Carney Hospital, Tufts University and while in Boston, he performed clinical research in double cord blood transplants at the Massachusetts General Hospital with Dr. Karen Ballen. Later he joined the University of Illinois at Chicago for his fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology. He helped design clinical trials using Pembrolizumab and Bevacizumab for renal cell carcinoma with Dr. Arkadiusz Dudek. He later moved to Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA for an advanced clinical fellowship in Stem Cell Transplant and Cancer Immunotherapies. He was exposed to multiple CAR-T cell therapies including CART CD19, CART BCMA and the Stanford led CD19/CD22 bispecific CAR-T cells for DLBCL. He then joined Montefiore Center for Cancer Care/Albert Einstein College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in hematologic malignancies, bone marrow transplant and CAR-T cell therapies. In the Zang lab, he is studying the role of novel checkpoints in hematologic malignancies as well as their potential connection with distinct mutational profiles and chemotherapy responses to explore new therapeutic opportunities. His main area of interest is to help with the CAR-T cell lab efforts in hematologic malignancies and to assist in their translational applications in clinical trials.

Publications

Wei Y, Ren X, Galbo PM, Moerdler S, Wang H, Sica RA, Etemad-Gilbertson B, Shi L, Zhu L, TangX, Lin Q, Peng M, Guan F, Zheng D, Chinai JM, Zang X. KIR3DL3-HHLA2 is a human immunosuppressive pathway and a therapeutic target. Science Immunology, 6:eabf9792, 2021

Acuna-Villaorduna A, Gonzalez-Lugo J, Ye BH, Adrianzen Herrera DA, Sica RA, Shah U, Shah N, Kornblum N, Braunschweig I, Derman O, Mantzaris I, Shastri A, Wang Y, Verma A, Zalta B, Janakiram M. High prevalence of pulmonary findings in computed tomographies of HTLV-1-infected patients with and without adult-T cell leukemia/lymphoma - implications for staging. Leukemia & Lymphoma. 17:1-5, 2019

Adrianzen Herrera D, Kornblum N, Acuna-Villaorduna A, Sica RA, Shah U, Butler M, Vishnuvardhan N, Shah N, Bachier-Rodriguez L, Derman O, Shastri A, Mantzaris I, Verma AK, Braunschweig I, Janakiram M. Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. 25(6):e199-e203, 2019

Adrianzen Herrera D, Kornblum N, Derman O, Bachier-Rodriguez L, Sica RA, Shastri A, Janakiram M, Verma A, Braunschweig I, Mantzaris I. Outcomes of autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation compared with chemotherapy consolidation alone for non-high-risk acute myeloid leukemia in first complete remission in a minority-rich Inner-city cohort with limited access to allografts. Clinical Lymphoma Myeloma and Leukemia. 19:516-521, 2019

Nikiforow S, Li S, Snow K, Liney D, Kao GS, Haspel R, Shpall EJ, Glotzbecker B, Sica RA, Armand P, Koreth J, Ho VT, Alyea EP 3rd, Ritz J, Soiffer RJ, Antin JH, Dey B, McAfee S, Chen YB, Spitzer T, Avigan D, Cutler CS, Ballen K. Lack of impact of umbilical cord blood unit processing techniques on clinical outcomes in adult double cord blood transplant recipients. Cytotherapy. 19:272-284, 2017

Sica RA., Jefferson G., Wenig BL, Aakalu V, Chen L, Kolokythas A, Spiotto MT, Patel D, Cuellar S, Domingo G, Feldman LE. Vismodegib as neoadjuvant for orbital recurrent basal cell carcinoma facilitates eye-sparing tumor excision. Anticancer Research Journal. 35: 6695-6704, 2015

Nimonkar AV, Sica RA, Kowalczykowski SC. Rad52 promotes second-end DNA capture in double-stranded break repair to form complement-stabilized joint molecules. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 106:3077-82, 2009.

Dr. Ankit Tanwar previously worked as a Post-Doctoral Scientist (2018-2022) with Prof. Stanley at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was working on Role of Notch Glycosylation in Hematopoiesis. Dr. Tanwar received his Ph.D. degree in Toxicology from the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences, New Delhi, India in 2018 followed by his master degree in Toxicology in 2014 and bachelor degree in Biochemistry from Shivaji College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, in 2012. He was a key worker of a team who coined the word "Herbal Informatics", which has been used for the initial screening of emergency-approved drug by DCGI: 2-Deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) for combating the COVID-19 situation in India. He is also serving as an Editorial Board and Co-chair of committees (JoLS/SoLS, USA and JoVE, USA, etc). In July 2022, he joined Prof. Zang's Lab and he is co-mentored by Dr. Alex Sica (Department of Oncology) and Prof. Zang (Department of Microbiology & Immunology). He is currently working on the function and mechanism of CAR-T cell therapy and new immune checkpoints.