Adilia Hormigo, MD, PhD, CRI-V Foundation CLIP Investigator Albert Einstein College of Medicine Area of Research: Brain Cancer Glioblastoma (GBM) is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, and presents one of the most dismal prognoses in all of medicine. One of the biggest barriers results from brain tumors being capable of co-opting and suppressing the body’s own natural immune responses. To overcome this immunosuppression in the brain, Dr. Hormigo developed a series of personalized GBM vaccines that have proven successful at boosting the body’s own cancer-fighting abilities, and the preliminary results are very promising. In the clinical trial where this vaccine was used to treat people with GBM, roughly 90% of patients remained alive at the one-year mark, and a similar proportion also remained progression free at the six-month mark. Now, Dr. Hormigo is using cutting-edge technologies like spatial sequencing to analyze in depth the molecular mechanisms of the immuno-suppressive tumor microenvironment that make GBM so pernicious. The goal to “eavesdrop” on the cross-talk between the tumor cells and the immune cells, in order to help predict treatment response and identify new immunotherapy targets. Projects and Grants Host tissue determinants of immunity and clinical response in glioblastoma Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai | Brain Cancer | 2021
