Carl H. June, M.D.
Professor, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Gene Therapy and Vaccines Program

Address

554 Biomedical Rsch Bldg (BRB) II/III
421 Curie Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6160

Office tel.: 215 573-5745
Fax: 215 573-8590
E-mail: cjune@mail.med.upenn.edu

Dr. June's Abramson Page

U.S. Naval Academy: BS (Biology), 1975.

Baylor College of Medicine: MD, 1979.

Research Interests

• Human T cell biology: mechanisms of lymphocyte costimulation.

Key words: T cells, human, gene therapy, genetic engineering, signal transduction.

Description of Research

There are two themes in the laboratory. One project involves determining mechanisms of lymphocyte activation. A more recent focus is to develop and test novel forms of immunotherapy for cancer and chronic infections. In the area of T cell signal transduction, for the past ten years these studies have been focused on CD28 and CTLA-4. More recently we have also been studying mechanisms that regulate chemokine receptor expression and signal transduction in T cells. In addition, we are studying the role of telomerase expression in telomere maintenance and replicative senescence in T cells. Novel lentiviral expression systems are permitting mechanistic studies of T cell costimulation in primary T cells for the first time.

Over the last five years my laboratory has been studying the potential use of adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and HIV infection. We have developed a large-scale tissue culture technique that permits the efficient propagation of polyclonal HIV CD4 and CD8 T cell subsets. Several clinical trials involving adoptive immunotherapy of autologous and allogeneic T cells are in process. Two trials are using genetically engineered T cells.

Selected Publications

Levine BL, Humeau LM, Boyer J, MacGregor RR, Rebello T, Lu X, Binder GK, Slepushkin V, Mascola,J.R., Bushman,F.D., Dropulic B, June CH. 2006. Gene transfer in humans using a conditionally replicating lentiviral vector. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 103:17372-17377.

Suhoski MM, Golovina TN, Aqui NA, Tai VC, Varela-Rohena A, Carroll RG, Riley JL, June CH. 2007. Engineering Artificial Antigen-presenting Cells to Express a Diverse Array of Co-stimulatory Molecules. Mol Ther. 15: 981-8.

Rossi,J.J., June C.H., and Kohn,D.B. 2007. Genetic Therapies for HIV/AIDS. Nat Biotechnol. 25:1444-1454.

Varela-Rohena A, Molloy PE, Dunn SM, Li Y, Suhoski M, Carroll RG, Milicic A, Mahon T, Suttton DH, June CH, Jakobsen BK, Sewell AK, Riley JL 2008. Control of HIV-1 immune escape by CD8 T cells expressing enhanced T-cell receptor. Nature Med. in press.

Perez EE, Jouvenot Y, Wang J, Miller JC, Kim KA, Liu O, Wang N, Lee G, Bartsevich V, Lee Y-L, Gregory PD, Riley JL, Holmes MC, June CH. 2008. Establishment of HIV-1 Resistance in CD4 T-cells by Genome Editing using Zinc Finger Nucleases. Nature Biotechnology In press

Search PubMed for more articles

Lab

Rotation Projects

1. mechanisms of T cell costimulation
2. generation of redirected T cells
3. mechanisms of superagonist T cell and NK cell signal transduction

Lab personnel

Carmine Carpenito, PhD, Research Associate
Richard Carroll, PhD, Laboratory Director
Tatiana Gologina, Research Associate
Xueli Hao, PhD, Post-Doc
Angie Mexas, VMD, PhD, Post-Doc
Chrystal Paulos, PhD, Post-Doc
Gabriela Plesa, PhD, Post-Doc
Megan Suhoski, Graduate Student
Zhengyu Wei, PhD, Post-Doc