Donald M. O'Rourke, M.D.
John Templeton, Jr., M.D. Professor in Neurosurgery
Faculty , Abramson Family Cancer Center, Cell and Development Biology Program, Cancer Biology Program, Translational Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania
Founding Member, Center for Cancer Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania
Director, Human Brain Tumor Tissue Bank, University of Pennsylvania
Faculty Member, Abramson Cancer Center, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Full Member, Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT), University of Pennsylvania
Founding Member, Philadelphia Coalition for a Cure (PC4C), The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania
Mack Technology Fellow, Mack Institute for Innovation Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania
Director, Glioblastoma Translational Center of Excellence, Abramson Cancer Center
Faculty, Penn Center for Cellular Immunotherapies
Department: Neurosurgery
Contact information
HUP - 15th floor, South Perelman
3401 Civic Center Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104
3401 Civic Center Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Office: 215-662-3490
Fax: 215-349-5534
Fax: 215-349-5534
Publications
Education:
A.B. (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)
Harvard University (Magna Cum Laude), 1983.
M.D. (Medicine)
University of Pennsylvania, 1987.
M.A. (Arts)
University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
Permanent linkA.B. (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)
Harvard University (Magna Cum Laude), 1983.
M.D. (Medicine)
University of Pennsylvania, 1987.
M.A. (Arts)
University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
Description of Research Expertise
EGFR-directed antibody, vaccine and cell therapies for malignant gliomas and glioblastomaDescription of Clinical Expertise
Neurosurgical Oncology for Malignant Brain Tumors; Cell Therapy for Malignant Brain Tumors; Local Delivery strategies; neurosurgical navigationDescription of Other Expertise
Innovation and licensing of novel intellectual property to advance the treatment of glioblastomaSelected Publications
Bagley SJ, Desai AS, Fraietta JA, Silverbush D, Chafamo D, Freeburg NF, Gopikrishna GK, Rech AJ, Nabavizadeh A, Bagley LJ,Park J, Jarocha D, Martins R, Sarmiento N, Maloney E, Lledo L, Stein C, Marshall A, Leskowitz RM, Jadlowsky JK, Mackey S, Christensen S, Oner BS, Plesa G, Brennan A, Gonzalez V, Chen F, Barrett D, Colbourn R, Nasrallah MP, Mourelatos Z, Hwang WT, Alanio C, Siegel DL, June CH, Hexner EO, Binder ZA, O'Rourke DM: Intrathecal bivalent CAR T cells targeting EGFR and IL13Rα2 in recurrent glioblastoma: a phase 1 trial Nat Med June 2025.Bagley SJ, Desai AS, Fraietta JA, Silverbush D, Chafamo D, Freeburg NF, Gopikrishna GK, Rech AJ, Nabavizadeh A, Bagley LJ, Park J, Jarocha D, Martins R, Sarmiento N, Maloney E, Lledo L, Stein C, Marshall A, Leskowitz RM, Jadlowsky JK, Mackey S, Christensen S, Oner BS, Plesa G, Brennan A, Gonzalez V, Chen F, Barrett D, Colbourn R, Nasrallah MP, Mourelatos Z, Hwang WT, Alanio C, Siegel DL, June CH, Hexner EO, Binder ZA, O'Rourke DM: Intracerebroventricular bivalent CAR T cells targeting EGFR and IL-13Rα2 in recurrent glioblastoma: a phase 1 trial. Nat Med June 2025.
Akbari H, Bakas S, Sako C, Fathi Kazerooni A, Villanueva-Meyer J, Garcia JA, Mamourian E, Liu F, Cao Q, Shinohara RT, Baid U, Getka A, Pati S, Singh A, Calabrese E, Chang S, Rudie J, Sotiras A, LaMontagne P, Marcus DS, Milchenko M, Nazeri A, Balana C, Capellades J, Puig J, Badve C, Barnholtz-Sloan JS, Sloan AE, Vadmal V, Waite K, Ak M, Colen RR, Park YW, Ahn SS, Chang JH, Choi YS, Lee SK, Alexander GS, Ali AS, Dicker AP, Flanders AE, Liem S, Lombardo J, Shi W, Shukla G, Griffith B, Poisson LM, Rogers LR, Kotrotsou A, Booth TC, Jain R, Lee M, Mahajan A, Chakravarti A, Palmer JD, DiCostanzo D, Fathallah-Shaykh H, Cepeda S, Santonocito OS, Di Stefano AL, Wiestler B, Melhem ER, Woodworth GF, Tiwari P, Valdes P, Matsumoto Y, Otani Y, Imoto R, Aboian M, Koizumi S, Kurozumi K, Kawakatsu T, Alexander K, Satgunaseelan L, Rulseh AM, Bagley SJ, Bilello M, Binder ZA, Brem S, Desai AS, Lustig RA, Maloney E, Prior T, Amankulor N, Nasrallah MP, O'Rourke DM, Mohan S, Davatzikos C and ReSPOND consortium: Machine learning-based prognostic subgrouping of glioblastoma: A multicenter study. Neuro Oncol 27(4): 1102-1115, May 2025.
Jadlowsky JK, Hexner EO, Marshall A, Grupp SA, Frey NV, Riley JL, Veloso E, McConville H, Rogal W, Czuczman C, Hwang WT, Li Y, Leskowitz RM, Farrelly O, Karar J, Christensen S, Barber-Rotenberg J, Gaymon A, Aronson N, Bernstein W, Melenhorst JJ, Roche AM, Everett JK, Zolnoski SA, McFarland AG, Reddy S, Petrichenko A, Cook EJ, Lee C, Gonzalez VE, Alexander K, Kulikovskaya I, Ramírez-Fernández Á, Minehart JC, Ruella M, Gill SI, Schuster SJ, Cohen AD, Garfall AL, Shah PD, Porter DL, Maude SL, Levine BL, Siegel DL, Chew A, McKenna S, Lledo L, Davis MM, Plesa G, Herbst F, Stadtmauer EA, Tebas P, DiNofia A, Haas A, Haas NB, Myers R, O'Rourke DM, Svoboda J, Tanyi JL, Aplenc R, Jacobson JM, Ko AH, Cohen RB, June CH, Bushman FD, Fraietta JA.: Long-term safety of lentiviral or gammaretroviral gene-modified T cell therapies. Nat Med 31(4): 1134-1144, Apr 2025.
Till JE, Seewald NJ, Yazdani Z, Wang Z, Ballinger D, Samberg H, Dandu S, Macia C, Yin M, Abdalla A, Prior T, Shah SS, Patel T, McCoy E, Mansour M, Wills CA, Bochenek V, Serrano J, Snuderl M, Phillips RE, O'Rourke DM, Amankulor NM, Nabavizadeh A, Desai AS, Gollomp K, Binder ZA, Zhou W, Bagley SJ, Carpenter EL: Corticosteroid-Dependent Association between Prognostic Peripheral Blood Cell-Free DNA Levels and Neutrophil-Mediated NETosis in Patients with Glioblastoma. Clin Cancer Res 31(7): 1292-1304, Apr 2025.
Fathi Kazerooni A, Akbari H, Hu X, Bommineni V, Grigoriadis D, Toorens E, Sako C, Mamourian E, Ballinger D, Sussman R, Singh A, Verginadis II, Dahmane N, Koumenis C, Binder ZA, Bagley SJ, Mohan S, Hatzigeorgiou A, O'Rourke DM, Ganguly T, De S, Bakas S, Nasrallah MP, Davatzikos C: The radiogenomic and spatiogenomic landscapes of glioblastoma and their relationship to oncogenic drivers. Commun Med (Lond) 5(1): 55, Mar 2025.
Logun M, Wang X, Sun YY, Bagley S, Li N, Desai A, Zhang DY, Nasrallah M, Pai EL, Oner BS, Plesa G, Siegel D, Binder ZA, Ming GL, Song H, O’Rourke DM: Patient-derived glioblastoma organoids as real-time avatars for assessing responses to clinical CAR-T cell therapy. Cell Stem Cell 32(2): 181-90, Feb 2025.
Sun Y, Wang X, Zhang DY, Zhang Z, Bhattarai JP, Wang Y, Park KH, Dong W, Hung YF, Yang Q, Zhang F, Rajamani K, Mu S, Kennedy BC, Hong Y, Galanaugh J, Sambangi A, Kim SH, Wheeler G, Gonçalves T, Wang Q, Geschwind DH, Kawaguchi R, Viaene AN, Helbig I, Kessler SK, Hoke A, Wang H, Xu F, Binder ZA, Isaac Chen H, Pai EL, Stone S, Nasrallah MP, Christian KM, Fuccillo M, Toni N, Wu Z, Cheng HJ, O'Rourke DM, Ma M, Ming GL, Song H.: Brain-wide neuronal circuit connectome of human glioblastoma. Nature Jan 2025.
Akbari H, Bakas S, Sako C, Fathi Kazerooni A, Villanueva-Meyer J, Garcia JA, Mamourian E, Liu F, Cao Q, Shinohara RT, Baid U, Getka A, Pati S, Singh A, Calabrese E, Chang S, Rudie J, Sotiras A, LaMontagne P, Marcus DS, Milchenko M, Nazeri A, Balana C, Capellades J, Puig J, Badve C, Barnholtz-Sloan JS, Sloan AE, Vadmal V, Waite K, Ak M, Colen RR, Park YW, Ahn SS, Chang JH, Choi YS, Lee SK, Alexander GS, Ali AS, Dicker AP, Flanders AE, Liem S, Lombardo J, Shi W, Shukla G, Griffith B, Poisson LM, Rogers LR, Kotrotsou A, Booth TC, Jain R, Lee M, Mahajan A, Chakravarti A, Palmer JD, DiCostanzo D, Fathallah-Shaykh H, Cepeda S, Santonocito OS, Di Stefano AL, Wiestler B, Melhem ER, Woodworth GF, Tiwari P, Valdes P, Matsumoto Y, Otani Y, Imoto R, Aboian M, Koizumi S, Kurozumi K, Kawakatsu T, Alexander K, Satgunaseelan L, Rulseh AM, Bagley SJ, Bilello M, Binder ZA, Brem S, Desai AS, Lustig RA, Maloney E, Prior T, Amankulor N, Nasrallah MLP, O'Rourke DM, Mohan S, Davatzikos C; ReSPOND consortium.: Machine Learning-based Prognostic Subgrouping of Glioblastoma: A Multi-center Study. Neuro Oncol Dec 2024.
Li N, Rodriguez JL, Yin Y, Logun MT, Zhang L, Yu S, Hicks KA, Zhang JV, Zhang L, Xie C, Wang J, Wang T, Xu J, Fraietta JA, Binder ZA, Lin Z, O'Rourke DM: Armored bicistronic CAR T cells with dominant-negative TGF-β receptor II to overcome resistance in glioblastoma. Mol Ther 32(10): 3522-3538, Oct 2024.