Dr. Sunil Martin

Career Interests

The overarching goal of our lab is to redirect and expand immune cells to target hematological malignancies. We are primarily focussing on augmenting the antitumor functions of NK cells, γδ T cell and αβ T cells by conferring specificity and robustness with Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs).

Education

• 2015-2016 : Scientist I at Department of Medical Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
• 2013-2015 : Research Fellow in Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
• 2010-2013 : Post Doctoral Fellow, Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute , University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
• 2004-2010 : PhD (Biotechnology), National Center for Cell Science, Pune, India
• 2002-2004 : M.Sc (Biotechnology), Center for Plant Molecular Biology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India

Awards

• 2017 Travel award from American Association for Pharmaceutical Sciences (AAPS-2013) under biotech section.
• 2014 National test of CSIR/UGC Fellowship.

Immune Cell Engineering and Therapy (iCET) Laboratory

CARs are artificial receptors synthesized by genetically fusing the extracellular antigen binding domain of an antibody or a natural ligand with the intracellular signalling domains of T Cell Receptor/CD3ζ and co-stimulatory molecules. CARs are unique because of the HLA independent target recognition integrating primary and co-stimulatory signals. This platform is designed to be upgradable, envisaging specific, durable and universal living T cell therapy to tackle the drug resistant and relapsed tumors which are often genetically unstable.

The potential for CAR therapy to be a therapy of choice for relapsed or chemotherapy resistant or intensely treated hematological malignancies is already a truism in medicine. Recently, CD19 CAR T cells demonstrated remarkable antitumor functions in the preclinical and clinical studies against B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r B-ALL). Hallmark clinical side effects such as tumor lysis syndrome, cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity still incur costly hospitalization. The FDA/PNA approved CAR-T formulations are processed and administered in the autologous setting, which significantly increase the expense. Graft versus host disease evoked by the endogenous αβTCR recognition of the host HLA restricts the potentially allogenic CAR-T cell transfusion. Multiple caveats of CAR therapy such as toxicity due to GvHD, batch to batch variability and cost can be mitigated by generating universal immune cells which can be engineered. Our lab ventures to address this limitation by changing the host cell of cars from αβT cells to γδ T cells, which sense patterns of malignant stress as opposed to tumor antigens presented by HLA.

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Collaborations (internal and external)

Internal

• Dr. Alok Srivastava (CSCR)
• Dr. Aby Abraham (CSCR)
• Dr. Mohankumar Murugesan (CSCR)
• Dr. Saravanabhavan Thangavel (CSCR)
• Dr. Srujan Kumar Marepall (CSCR)
• Mr. Augustine Thambaiah (CSCR)

External

• Dr. Trent H Spencer (Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta U.S.A)
• Dr. Sunil Raikar (Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta U.S.A)