Gheath Alatrash, DO, PhD

Although the COVID19 pandemic slightly slowed our progress, we were able to meet a number of our goals pertaining to this grant. Our lab scientists have had to socially distance and at times work in shifts to maintain an appropriate amount of space between individuals. As a result, the pace of our work was slightly slower than usual and the interactions needed between our scientists to accomplish the work were at times hampered by the social distancing required. Nevertheless, we are happy with the progress we made thus far. We have focused our efforts over the past year on conducting experiments and analyzing data. To date, we have not presented our findings at any meetings.
 

Update: We completed numerous experiments for both aims of our proposal. Our project encompassed two aims: Aim 1 is to determine the effects of fucosylation on EGFR-CAR-T cell homing into lung cancer, while Aim 2 is to confirm that fucosylation enhances the efficacy of EGFR-CAR-T cells in lung cancer animal models without causing toxicity. We have successfully generated chimeric antigen receptor T cells that target EGFR (EGFR-CAR-T cells) and showed potent fucosylation of the EGFR-CAR-T cells. We observed that fucosylation enhances migration and cytotoxic activities of EGFR-CAR-T cells, and demonstrated that fucosylation regulates distinct T cell surface molecules.