Xufeng Chen
Assistant Professor
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center at Houston
Department of Hematopoietic Biology and Malignancy
Targeted therapy and immunotherapy have revolutionized the field of cancer therapy in the past decade, especially for blood cancers, which is evidenced by the FDA approval of several targeted therapies and cellular immunotherapies for certain types of blood cancers. However, a substantial subset of patients does not respond to these therapies or develops resistance. These clinical observations highlight the unmet need for 1) dissecting cancer-associated drug resistance and immune evasion mechanisms, 2) establishing their connections with treatment efficacy, and 3) reversing these pro-cancer events to improve patient outcomes.
Our previous research discovered that mitochondrial dynamics could be a promising strategy to overcome drug resistance of apoptotic inducers (Cancer Discovery, 2019, 2023). Besides, we also identified and characterized a first-in-class membrane-associated MHC-I inhibitory axis for cancer immune evasion (Cell, 2023; Trends in Immunology, 2024). Additionally, through T-cell cytotoxicity-based screenings, we identified a core transcriptional circuitry whose perturbation restores cancer immunogenicity and potentiates TCR-T therapies (ongoing).
Our experience emphasizes that the complexity of drug resistance and immune suppression mechanisms stems from the dysregulation of not only endogenous abnormalities but also the cancer-immune cell interactions within the cancer immune microenvironment. Therefore, we aim to explore the fundamental principles of intercellular communication between immune cells and cancer cells to decode the intricate networks that contribute to treatment resistance and immune evasion in blood cancer.
Examples of projects include dissecting the cancer-immune co-evolving events, systematic and functional profiling of cancer-immune crosstalk, and developing new target discovery platforms for next-generation immunotherapy.
Education & Training
PhD, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, 2015