The NEYE-Foundation has generously awarded 650,064 kr to CCG to help recruit Thapakorn Jaroentomeechai, a star student in glycoengineering and antibody development from Cornell. Thapakorn will receive his PhD from the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell Engineering next month, and he has developed an impressive publication record with his mentor professor Matthew DeLisa. We are pleased that Thapakorn now wants to use his unique expertise at CCG and continue his career with our cell-based glycan and mucin display platforms. Thapakorn will be employed one year (August 2021 – September 2022) as a postdoc and he is currently applying for additional funding to extend his stay at CCG. We all look forward to welcoming Thapakorn later in 2021.

Thapakorn Jaroentomeechai will explore new targets for cancer immunotherapy
Immunotherapy of cancer has made great advances with the introduction of potent T-cell engaging immunotherapeutic strategies and immune checkpoint inhibition. Safe use of T-cell engaging immunotherapeutic strategies, including chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-Ts) and bispecific antibodies (BiTEs), require antibodies with high selectivity for cancer cells and essentially no reactivity with normal cells. This is particularly true for solid tumors, and lack of cancer-specific antibodies is arguably the major barrier for development of safe CAR-T and BiTE therapies of solid tumors. Thapakorn will apply CCGs novel cell-based mucin display resource to mine immunity to aberrantly glycosylated mucins. The objective is to transform knowledge of patient immunity to mucins into potent and safe cancer-specific antibody targeting and vaccine strategies.

 
CCG thanks the NEYE-Foundation for making this project possible.