Currently Research Associate at Kintai Therapeutics
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I work at (recently merged with Senda Biosciences) Kintai Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA as a research associate on the translational biology team. The company's research focuses on harnessing nature's transfer systems to cross biological barriers and deliver novel therapeutics in different fields including oncology, metabolic disease and immunology. I develop and optimize mammalian in vitro assays to test these therapeutic candidates, support the in vivo work, and perform ex vivo analyses.
Deepika Suryaprakash
(Masters, 2018)
Currently Associate Scientist at Genentech
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I graduated from UNC-Charlotte Biology program in 2019. I worked on developing CAR-T cell therapy for resistant pancreatic cancer. The training I received in Dr. Mukherjee's lab has set the stones for my future career as a cancer immunologist. I am currently a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford university. I am working on characterization and engineering T cells that are suitable for treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in pediatric patients who mostly receive bone marrow transplant. We focus on g/d T cells as it is the ideal candidate for allogenic adoptive therapy due to low risk for GvHD. Our lab is focused on clinical research and I feel very lucky to be working on an interesting project with the possibility of translating into the clinic. I am also grateful for being able to work with and get inspired by the great scientists in the field everyday. I hope to continue my cancer immunology/T cell immunotherapy research independently in the future and contribute to cancer treatment .
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Dr. Maribel Yazdanifar
(PhD 2019)
Currently Sales Representative at Diagomics (France)
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I had a postdoctoral position at UNCC for 2 years (2016-2018) in the lab of Dr Valery Grdzelishvili. My research focused on virotherapy to fight cancer cells. This strategy is based on the capacity of viruses to enter and replicate selectively in cancer cells in order to kill them. Viruses are considered as a good and promising alternative to fight cancer with less side effects compared to chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments. During my 2 years in the lab of Dr. Grdzelishvili, I not only had a great time with the team professionally but also made life-long friends.
After my post-doc at UNCC, I went on to do another post-doctoral training at University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in Philadelphia where I worked on immunotherapy strategy. Over there, I developed liposomal nanoparticles armed with drugs to target immune system cells allowing them to fight cancer cells with more efficiency.
Currently, I am working in France (my home country) as a sales representative in a company specialized in the commercialization of reagents intended for cancerology to support in vitro diagnostics and research. I offer consultation to healthcare to professionals regarding the best molecular markers for cancer diagnosis. In parallel, I also offer technical advice and a large range of products to researchers to help them with experiments in the lab.
