Postdoctoral Fellow

Marcel Arias Badia

Profile

Marcel Arias Badia is a biotechnologist and biochemist who completed his PhD in Biomedicine at the University of Barcelona in oncolytic virotherapy. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, specializing in antitumor immunity, γδ T cells, and checkpoint blockade. He has also contributed to biotech development of cancer immunotherapies. He currently leads pediatric AML immunophenotyping at IJC/SJD, focusing on γδ T cell–based strategies to improve patient outcomes.

Project description

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is the most common adult leukemia and shows concerning 5-year survival rates below 30% as well as increasing prevalence in the last years. While most immunotherapies focus on the cancer-fighting abilities of T cells, there is accumulating evidence highlighting T cell subsets as mediators of tumor clearance both in solid and hematological tumors. These cells offer significant advantages over T cells, including allogeneic potential and resistance to T cell exhaustion. However, the precise events in AML patients that lead to the enrichment of specific T cell subsets and phenotypes remain poorly understood. In this proposal, I will comprehensively characterize T cells present in adult AML across different disease stages and treatment statuses followed by functional validation ex vivo and in vivo. The overarching goal is to identify key protumoral and antitumoral T cell populations and therefore discern desirable and exploitable T cell functional states in AML, possibly revolving around dysfunctional T cell gene expression. Recognizing the translational challenges of T cell anti-cancer immunity, such as effective ex vivo expansion, we plan to explore the application of these findings in developing T cell-based immunotherapies. To achieve these goals, I will use cutting-edge techniques such as multiparameter flow cytometry or single cell RNA sequencing for multiomic analysis, followed up by in vitro functional assays (i.e. T cell-mediated tumor killing and stimulation) and adoptive transfer experiments in relevant AML mouse models.