Xianxin Hua, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Cancer Biology, Department of Cancer Biology, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Hua has a long-term interest in investigating how the Menin epigenetic pathway regulates gastrointestinal (GI) cancers including neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) as well as acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and in developing innovative chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-expressing T cell therapies. Although CAR-T therapy has achieved remarkable success in treating B cell lineage-related leukemia, the progress is lagging for treating solid cancers. Dr. Hua’s team invented the STAR technology platform to quickly identify multiple antibodies targeting tumor associating antigens (TAAs) for solid cancers. His group developed novel CAR T therapy for treating the aggressive GI-cancers, and recently discovered that CDH17CART cells eradicated multi-types of solid cancers, including NETs, gastric and colorectal cancers, and pancreatic cancers in preclinical models. Notably, CDH17CARTs do not cause toxicity to healthy normal cells that also express CDH17 protein. These studies pave the way to develop novel immunotherapy to treat the aggressive solid cancers. Dr. Hua’s research led to multiple patents including CDH17CART technology licensed to Chimeric Therapeutics by Penn. He has also involved in startups and consulting for biotech companies, and published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in journals including Nature, Cell, and Nature Cancer.
