Lead by Marcela Maus, MD, PhD and Matthew Frigault, MD, the Cellular Immunotherapy Program brings together physicians and laboratory scientists focused on immune cell engineering and its clinical effects.
Leadership
Marcela Maus, MD, PhD Director, Cellular Immunotherapy Program Mass General Cancer Center
Learn more about Marcela Maus, MD, PhD
Marcela Maus, MD, PhD Director, Cellular Immunotherapy Program Paula O’Keeffe Chair in Oncology
Attending Physician Hematopoietic Cell Transplant & Cell Therapy Program Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Maus is the Paula O'Keeffe Endowed Chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the Director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program. She is also a Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she runs a laboratory focused on developing and improving CAR T cell therapy for cancer patients while also periodically attending for the bone marrow transplant service. Dr. Maus grew up in New York, NY and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her undergraduate degree in Biology and Literature. She then earned her MD, PhD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine under the direction of her PhD mentor, Dr. Carl June. She then did a one-year postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Kathy High at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, completed her clinical training in internal medicine, hematology, and oncology as a resident at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and was a fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Dr. Michel Sadelain’s lab.
Following her extensive training, Marcela returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 to expand research efforts in the development of CAR T cells for lymphoma, myeloma, and other cancers. While there, Marcela continued her efforts on the preclinical development of CAR T cells and correlative studies of CAR T cell-related toxicities and resistance to therapies. Now, Dr. Maus runs a laboratory focused on developing and improving CAR T cell therapy for cancer patients. She has won numerous awards for her transformative research and is achieving her goal of using science to determine the best way to treat patients by harnessing the power of the immune system to solve intractable problems like cancer. She also enjoys training clinicians and scientists and watching her mentees succeed and become independent scientists and collaborators. Marcela is also a mother to three children, one large dog and one gecko. In her free time, Marcela enjoys spending time with her husband, kids, and pets, gardening, and skiing.
Matthew Frigault, MD Administrative Director, Cellular Therapy Service Mass General Cancer Center
Investigator and Physician Team
To bring therapies to patients, a dedicated team of early-phase clinical investigators in oncology play a central role in cancer immunology at Mass General.
Clinical Directors
Jeremy Slade Abramson, MD Director, Jon and Jo Ann Hagler Center for Lymphoma Mass General Cancer Center
The Immune Monitoring Laboratory is an essential and integral part of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program. The laboratory provides expertise to enable translational clinical studies of immune-based therapies, based on the highest standard operating systems.
Kathleen Gallagher, PhD Director, Immune Monitoring Laboratory Mass General Cancer Center
Process Development Laboratory
Magdi Elsallab, MD, PhD Director, Process Development Lab Lab Director, Cellular Therapy and Transplantation Laboratory Mass General Cancer Center
Blood Transfusion Service
The Blood Transfusion Service is an FDA-licensed, full-service blood bank that consists of the Blood Donor Center, the Outpatient Infusion Unit, the Apheresis Unit, the Transfusion Service, and the Histocompatibility (HLA) Laboratory.
It’s fitting that the investigators who developed a new CAR T-based treatment for glioblastoma called their treatment platform “CAR-TEAM” cells, as it took a true team effort to bring their concept from the lab to the clinic.
Cellular Immunotherapy Program
The Cellular Immunotherapy Program is working to expand cellular engineering and immunotherapy research by bringing together physicians and laboratory scientists focused on immune cell engineering and its clinical effects.