Willy Hugo
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain cancer that usually kills within two years. It is also known for resisting immune attack.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
glioblastoma
brain cancer
cancer immunotherapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether long-term glioblastoma survivors after ATL-DC vaccination have more stem-like, progenitor-exhausted TCF7+ PD1+ CD8 T cells in their tumors, using spatial transcriptomics and high-plex immunofluorescence.
- Compare immune architecture between exceptional and short-term survivors to test whether durable responses coincide with fewer immunosuppressive macrophages in the tumor microenvironment.
- Track systemic immune activation and T cell repertoire changes in blood from long-term responders, using single-cell sequencing to characterize clonally expanded T cells.
- Test mechanisms nominated by the patient data in immune-rich and immunosuppressive mouse glioblastoma models treated with ATL-DC, examining both tumor and whole-body immunity.
More about the research
Yet some patients treated with a personalized vaccine survive far longer. The vaccine, called ATL-DC, is made by loading dendritic cells, immune cells that teach other immune cells what to attack, with material from the patient's own tumor. About 5.7% of patients survive five years with standard care, compared with 13% after ATL-DC. That figure reaches 25% in patients whose tumors carry a silenced, heavily methylated MGMT gene. This project asks what makes these long-term survivors different.
Why it matters
Glioblastoma patients face very poor survival, and most do not benefit lastingly from immunotherapy. Learning why some patients respond durably to the ATL-DC dendritic cell vaccine could guide strategies to extend that benefit to more patients. This includes ways to support long-lived T cells or reduce suppressive macrophages in the brain tumor environment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Daniel Brat
Northwestern University, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether the spatial arrangement of tumor-associated macrophages alongside hypoxic glioma cells in the peri-necrotic niche sustains immune suppression, using an RCAS/tv-a mouse model to follow microenvironment changes after necrosis in real time.
Geoffrey Markowitz
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify metabolic enzymes whose loss increases generation of TCF1+ progenitor-exhausted CD8+ T cells, using a CRISPR/Cas9 knockout screen in vitro across T cells with different T-cell receptor affinities.
Nu Zhang
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how TRM-stem cells, Tcf-1+ stem-like CD8+ T cells that become resident in tumor-draining lymph nodes, are related to other T cell subsets there, by tracking tumor-specific T cells in mouse tumor models.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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