Our Researchers in Action

Marco Gallo, PhD: Drilling Down Into the DNA

Not all glioblastoma (GBM) cancer cells are functionally identical. Those with properties reminiscent of normal stem cells have been proven to initiate tumor growth and to evade current therapies. Those are the cells Marco Gallo,

Maciek S. Lesniak, MD: Necessity is the Mother of Invention

As an accomplished neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago, Ill.), Maciej S. Lesniak, MD , was frustrated. He and his colleagues were highly skilled and extremely knowledgable, yet despite their best efforts and state-of-the-art standards of care,

Crystal Mackall: Unleashing the Hounds

“To use a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer, we need to turn that patient’s CAR T cells into bloodhounds. We train them to sniff out and kill cancer cells,” says Crystal Mackall, MD, of Stanford University (Stanford,

When Noriyuki Kasahara, MD, PhD, was a student in medical school, he watched his aunt lay in a coma for nearly a year, dying of glioblastoma. It was then that he realized that, as a physician, he’d likely be able to help at most a few thousand or so patients a year.

BRENT HANKS: I Feel Optimistic

Melanoma has been steadily increasing in recent years, and despite improvements in diagnosis and early stage treatment, metastatic cancer patients face staggering low chances for recovery. At Duke University School of Medicine (Durham, N.C.), tumor immunologist Brent Hanks,