Jindrich Kopecek
University of Utah, UT·Biomedical Engineering
Multiple myeloma, a cancer of antibody-making B cells, often returns or stops responding to treatment. A newer kind of drug, the bispecific antibody, grabs a cancer cell and a T cell at once, steering the immune cell to kill the cancer.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Pharmacology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
multiple myeloma
B cell malignancies
cancer immunotherapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Study how Multi-Antigen T Cell Hybridizers (MATCH), which join T cells to cancer cells by pairing complementary morpholino oligonucleotide strands, activate T cells against multiple myeloma cells and define how they work.
- Build a mini-library of antibody fragments against myeloma markers BCMA, CD38 and GPRC5D that pair with a CD3-binding T cell fragment, to target tumors that lack one marker.
- Test the effectiveness of MATCH in animal models of multiple myeloma, and evaluate optimized versions on cells from patients with different stages of the disease.
More about the research
These drugs work but have problems: cancers can lose the target marker, and overactive T cells can trigger cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a dangerous wave of inflammation. This project builds modular, drug-free nanomedicines that link cells together by DNA-like base pairing, aiming for more flexible and controlled immunotherapy.
Why it matters
Patients with relapsed or treatment-resistant multiple myeloma have limited options, and current T cell-engaging antibodies can cause cytokine release syndrome and lose effect as tumors change. A modular, patient-tailored approach like MATCH could target several tumor markers at once with more controlled T cell activation. It may also apply to other B cell cancers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
John Wagner
University of Minnesota, MN·Medicine & Clinical Research
Establish the safety and maximum tolerated dose of donor CAR19 regulatory T cells, given with and without IL-2, in patients with relapsed or refractory CD19+ acute lymphocytic leukemia, measuring cell persistence and tumor killing.
Samir Parekh
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Translate findings from cancer immunology and cancer mechanism laboratories into investigator-initiated clinical trials through Clinical Trial Incubators, Drug Discovery Clinics and Tumor Working Groups.
Mingnan Chen
University of Utah, UT·Pharmacology
Determine why a depleting anti-PD-1 antibody delays diabetes in early insulitis but accelerates it in late insulitis in NOD mice, profiling pancreatic islets and systemic immune cells by single-cell RNA sequencing and flow cytometry before and after treatment.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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