Amy Heimberger, MD. She is brain tumor surgent and brain tumor immune therapy pioneer. Her lab is centralized on brain tumor immune therapy and has developed the brain tumor peptide vaccine for treating patients with brain tumors. One pathway for brain tumor escape immune response is Stat3. Her lab has tested small molecule inhibitors, miRNA, aptamers, ultrasound for targeting Stat3 and other negative immune regulators such as Fgl2.

Shulin Li, PhD. He starts his immune therapy lab in 1999 focusing on developing safe, simple, and effective cytokine immune therapies for solid tumors in preclinical tumor models. His laboratory has developed the fist and second generation of tumor-targeted Il12 immune therapy based on the innovative observation that cell surface vimentin (CSV) is only present in the highly malignant tumor cell surface. However, tumors developed resistance to IL12 or other types of immune therapy. To address this challenge, his lab discovered that the underlying mechanism for the immune resistance to IL12 immune therapy is due to the induction of immune checkpoint inhibitors and immune suppressive cells such as Fgl2 and PD-L1. Interestingly, Fgl2 is an inducer of PD-L1, CD39, CD73, MDSC, Treg as observed by his laboratory. Knockout Fgl2 completely eliminates brain tumor progression in immune competent mice by boosting CD3 DC cells population.

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