Labs

Amankulor Lab

The Amankulor Lab is a neurosurgical oncology lab at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine investigating the immune-modulating properties of IDH-mutant glioma. Their ultimate purpose lies in the lives of the patients and the eradication of this immunosuppressive and universally fatal disease. Recently, Dr. Amaknulor was named a Cancer Moonshot Scholar by President Joe Biden for his research work. This new program created by President Biden was launched to support a workforce that will drive progress to end cancer. The funding received from this award supports the research endeavors conducted within this lab.

Hambardzumyan Lab

Despite intensive multimodal therapies, glioblastomas remain universally fatal. Recent advances in glioma biology have revealed that these tumors exist within a highly complex microenvironment composed of both neoplastic (tumor) and non-neoplastic (normal) cells. Research from the Hambardzumyan Lab and others has shown that glioma growth is sustained by regulatory signals derived from this microenvironment. Consequently, brain tumors are viewed as complex cellular ecosystems where interactions between tumor and non-tumor components influence tumor initiation, progression, and resistance to therapy.

The most abundant non-neoplastic cell population within the glioblastoma microenvironment is the myeloid cell population. Various subsets of these cells are recruited into the tumor mass from the bloodstream, where they exert immunosuppressive properties and secrete growth factors and cytokines in response to signals from the tumor. Although myeloid subsets are genetically stable, they exhibit diverse transcriptional programs in glioblastoma. Their research has demonstrated that the abundance, composition, and expression profiles of myeloid cells differ across various molecular subtypes of human glioblastoma, likely reflecting the genetic heterogeneity inherent to these tumors.

In addition to their research on adult glioblastoma, the Hambardzumyan Lab is dedicated to advancing the understanding of pediatric high-grade gliomas. They focus particularly on hemispheric pHGG and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. Their research explores how the anatomical location of tumors and specific histone mutations shape the tumor microenvironment and influence responses to therapy.

The laboratory examines how various myeloid subsets infiltrate tumors and interact with one another, tumor cells, and T cells. They utilize fresh patient samples, patient-derived organoid cultures, genetically engineered mouse models, and next-generation humanized mice for our research.

Jackson Lab

The Jackson Lab’s research is at the intersection of immunology, metabolism, and brain tumor biology. The primary goal of their translational research is to understand mechanisms of immune evasion by primary malignant brain tumors and skull base tumors to generate novel immune-based therapies. They utilize a combination of high-dimensional single cell immune and genomic profiling, metabolomics, and advanced tumor organoid and mouse models, to 1) understand the role of myeloid derived suppressor cells in promoting tumor growth and T cell dysfunction, 2) elucidate the mechanisms of tumor-specific T cell exhaustion and clonal lineage of dysfunction T cells, and 3) understand how metabolic networks control immune cell function within the tumor microenvironment.

O'Rourke Lab

Glioblastoma (GBM), glioma grade IV, is a devastating cancer with an annual incidence of 3.19/100,000 individuals per year (~10,000) and a median survival of 14.6 months following standard-of-care surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Few advances in treatment have been realized over the past 20 years, and 2-year survival remains close to 25 percent. In the O'Rourke Lab we are developing novel methods for treating GBM and improving the outcomes of patients with this devastating disease. Our research focuses several areas of immuno-oncology, supported by model establishment and development. Dr. O'Rourke's position in the University of Pennsylvania Brain and Spinal Cord Tumor Program provides our group with access to significant tumor tissue resources, providing a wide variety of GBM models for our research.

Phillips Lab

The Phillips Lab is interested in understanding how epigenetic mechanisms drive the development of brain cancer. Drawing from our focused investigations into epigenetic regulation, in addition to more unbiased approaches, we seek to identify novel therapies for patients with brain cancer. Our work sits at the interface of chromatin biology, neuroscience and cancer biology.

Song Lab

Research in Dr. Hongjun Song's laboratory focuses on two core topics: (1) neural stem cell regulation and neurogenesis in the developing and adult mammalian brain and how these processes affect neural function; (2) epigenetic and epitranscriptomic mechanisms and their functions in the mammalian nervous system. The lab is also interested in addressing how dysfunction of these mechanisms may be involved in brain disorders.

Mohan Lab

The research at Innovative Neuroimaging and Spectroscopy Research Laboratory (INSPire) is primarily directed towards development, optimization and
application of metabolic and physiologic MR imaging techniques in various neuro-oncologic clinical applications. Particularly, we leverage the potential of robust, reproducible, objective and quantitative 3T MR imaging derived parameters and molecular signatures combined with machine learning based methods for making accurate diagnosis and assessment of treatment response in glioblastoma patients receiving standard of care treatment and novel therapies such as tumor treating fields, immunotherapies and targeted therapies.

Fan Lab

The mission the Fan Laboratory is to develop new therapies in cancer and regenerative medicine by targeting the tissue microenvironment.

As a seed needs the correct light, water, and soil to germinate and grow, most malignant diseases require a highly specialized environment to initiate, develop and progress. Interactive stromal cells including vasculature, immune cells, and stem cells, create a tissue-specific microenvironment with abundant soluble factors and matrix conducive to cancer progression and post-injury tissue repair. The goal of our laboratory is to decipher the key mechanisms that control the formation of a body-hostile, disease-friendly tissue microenvironment. By targeting the tissue microenvironment we will be able to penetrate the microenvironment allowing host defenses and situation-specific therapies to target the diseased tissue with great efficacy.

Foster Lab

The Foster Lab specializes in the development of novel immunotherapies designed to treat pediatric brain and spinal cord tumors.  Our primary focus is chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, where we have used mRNA to create effective CAR T cells. We are actively investigating:  1) optimal CAR T-cell delivery sites and trafficking in the brain, 2) efficacy and toxicity of mRNA transfected CAR T-cells vs. virally transduced CAR T-cells, and 3) identification and testing of new CAR targets. We have a heavy translational focus, and our work is aimed at bringing novel therapeutics to clinical trials.

Oldridge Lab

The Oldridge Lab studies the intricate spatial biology of intact tissues, combining cutting-edge spatialomic techniques with advanced computational, statistical, and AI-driven analytic methods. We use these approaches to deeply profile tissues with hundreds to thousands of molecular markers in a spatially detailed manner, in order to better understand the molecular, cellular, and structural basis of human health and disease.

Our primary scientific focus is to study tumor-immune interactions in the microenvironment of brain tumors as a basis for improving immunotherapies for deadly and difficult to treat cancers. Additionally, our interests extend to studying immunopathology in diverse disease contexts, including other cancers, autoimmune diseases, and transplantation pathology. Our studies span the full spectrum of basic <-> translational <-> clinical research, including pre-clinical animal models as well as human clinical trials.

We further use AI-driven integration of spatialomics with traditional pathology imaging in order to bring spatial biology insights into the clinic. The field of pathology is undergoing a massive digital revolution following FDA approval of digital imaging for primary diagnostics in 2017, unburdening the field of pathology from reliance on physical glass slides. As the first pediatric hospital to implement full digitization of all pathology imaging in 2019, and with hundreds of thousands of tissue images scanned to date, we are uniquely situated at CHOP to bring computational and AI analysis of tissue images into the clinical domain.

Silverbush Lab

The Silverbush Lab is dedicated to unraveling the complexities of tumor heterogeneity and plasticity. Our goal is to understand the mechanisms through which cancer cells transform, becoming more aggressive or evading treatment. 

We work with human samples, often from clinical trials, to uncover how these mechanisms influence the outcome of a clinical trial and how we can leverage these mechanisms to improve outcomes. We place special emphasis on hard-to-treat cancers characterized by high levels of heterogeneity, with a particular focus on brain cancers, known for their notoriety in heterogeneity and aggressiveness.

To achieve our objectives, we develop and utilize a combination of wet lab and computational multi-omic single-cell tools. Our interdisciplinary team is composed of MDs, biologists, immunologists, computational biologists, and experts in computer science, with a strong focus on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Together, we are committed to advancing our understanding of cancer’s complexity and devising innovative strategies to combat it.

Camara Lab

At the Camara Lab develop and apply computational and mathematical approaches to study cellular heterogeneity and its role in disease. By combining ideas from geometry, topology, statistics, physics, and computer science with high-throughput single-cell technologies and large-scale population studies, we seek to understand the cellular composition and signaling networks of brain tumors in relation to their genetics and clinical characteristics. We expect our methods to be helpful to a broader community and collaborate with groups in related areas, such as neurodevelopment.