University of California, Los Angeles
$500,000 Magnolia Council Senior Investigator Grant
Research Title:
Targeting Monoamine Oxidase A to Expand Cancer Immune Checkpoint Blockade Therapy
Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapies have revolutionized the treatment of many cancers; however, the existing ICB therapies can only benefit a small fraction of cancer patients, demanding an expansion of ICB therapies. Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) is an enzyme best known for its function in the brain; small molecule MAO inhibitors (MOIs) have been developed and are clinically used for treating depression. This proposal aims to study MAO-A regulation of antitumor immunity and evaluate MAO-A blockade for cancer immunotherapy. The project has the potential to identify MAO-A as a new immune checkpoint and support repurposing MAOI antidepressants for cancer immunotherapy.
Dr. Lili Yang is currently an Associate Professor at UCLA. She received her B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Science & Technology of China (USTC) in 1997, her M.S. degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in 1999, and her Ph.D. degree in Biology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2004. She obtained her Ph.D. training at the Laboratory of David Baltimore. Post graduation, she stayed at Caltech and led a multi-institutional Engineering Immunity Program from 2004 to 2012, developing gene- and cell-based immunotherapies for cancer and HIV/AIDS. She joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an Assistant Professor in 2013. Her laboratory at UCLA studies tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy, with a special focus on stem cell-based and gene-engineered immunotherapy for cancer. Her work has resulted in over 35 peer-reviewed publications (in prestigious journals including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS, J Exp Med, J Clin Invest, Blood, etc.), 15 patents, 2 clinical trials, and 2 biotech startups.