Weike Pei, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow Brigham & Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School Area of Research: Leukemia, Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma Current checkpoint immunotherapies against the PD-1/PD-L1 and CTLA-4 pathways have been successful in treating a variety of advanced cancers, but have limited clinical benefit for treating blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Recently, TIM-3 has been recognized as a promising therapeutic target in treating blood cancers because TIM-3 is highly expressed on leukemia cells, and also functions as an inhibitory checkpoint on immune cells. Despite the therapeutic potential of TIM-3 blockade, a thorough understanding of its biology remains far from complete. Little is known about how TIM-3 influences tumor initiation and progression, and how TIM-3 affects immune-related signaling in leukemia cells. Dr. Pei is unraveling the role of TIM-3 in the regulation of blood cancer development and stimulation of anti-cancer immune responses. He aims to understand how TIM-3 regulates the fate of cancer cells in order to provide a mechanistic basis for therapeutic blockade of TIM-3. Projects and Grants Unraveling the Biology of TIM-3 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School | Leukemia, Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma | 2021 | Vijay Kuchroo, PhD
