Hratch Baghdassarian, PhD, CRI Immuno-Informatics Fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology Area of Research: All Cancers Hratch Baghdassarian, PhD, a bioinformatics expert, is developing computational tools to enhance CAR T-cell therapy’s effectiveness against cancer. His research has bridged immunology and systems biology, focusing on how cells communicate within the immune system. By creating a method to analyze multi-dimensional data from single-cell RNA sequencing, he is pioneering ways to decode how immune cells adapt to different cancer environments. His groundbreaking work includes a first-author study in The New England Journal of Medicine on a heritable STAT4 mutation causing a rare disease, and the development of Tensor-cell2cell, a tool that accelerates biological discovery by uncovering context-dependent immune cell interactions. He has also extended human metabolic models, shedding light on the Warburg effect in cancer cells, with promising implications for CAR T-cell treatments. With over 12 published papers, Dr. Baghdassarian’s work continues to drive advancements in immunotherapy, providing new strategies to improve cancer treatments and accelerate therapeutic discovery. Projects and Grants Pathways to Potency: Unveiling signaling mechanisms of high efficacy CAR T-cells Massachusetts Institute of Technology | All Cancers | 2025 | Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD
