Gohar Manzar
Assistant Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center at Houston
Department of Radiation Oncology
I am an Assistant Professor and physician-scientist in pediatric radiation oncology. During my training, I explored a longstanding interest in natural killer (NK) cell biology within the laboratory of Dr. Katy Rezvani, merging my background in radiation biology and NK cell immunology to investigate how radiation therapy (RT) can synergize with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cell therapy.
The goal of my work (all in collaboration with Dr. Rezvani and her neighboring laboratory) is to enhance human NK cell therapy through RT for the treatment of adult and pediatric solid tumors, and to uncover the relevant mechanisms behind this. We hope these developments will be translated into clinical trials. As background for this work, CAR-T cells have limited efficacy in solid tumors. There is scant but promising preclinical rationale that RT may improve the efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy in solid tumors. Innovative and cutting-edge CAR-NK cell therapy poses some advantage to CAR-T cell therapy but there is no prior work examining the interplay of RT with CAR-NK cell therapy.
Projects students may undertake during audition rotations will involve establishing radiotherapeutic thresh-holds for specific tumor cell lines, and perform in vitro analyses of tumor killing and their interaction with NK cells supplied from the Rezvani lab, as the basis for in vivo experiments to follow. Exploring various radiation therapy regimens and types will be of prime interest to us. We have many mechanistic angles we plan to pursue as well. It’s an exciting space!
Education & Training
MD, Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, 2019
PhD, University of Iowa, 2015