Nelson Chao
Professor of Medicine, Immunology, Pathology and Global Health
Appointment:
Nelson Chao
Professor of Medicine, Immunology, Pathology and Global Health
My research interests are in two broad areas, clinical hematopoietic stem cell and cord blood transplantation and in the laboratory studies related to graft vs. host disease and immune reconstitution. On the clinical side we are currently conducting approximately 50 different clinical protocols ranging from preparatory regimens, supportive care studies and disease specific protocols. Most of these clinical studies are centered around studies of the sources of stem cells and the methods to improve the long term outcome. There are exploratory protocols for novel therapies such as dendritic cell therapy for several malignancies, antiangiogenesis therapy, graft engineering to prevent graft-versus-host disease and antigen specific T cells or non specific NK cells to prevent relapse. Moreover a strong focus of the program is to develop cord-blood transplantation for adult patients with hematologic malignancies. The laboratory studies center on understanding the immunological events that occur with graft-vs-host disease and methods to prevent this disease. The current efforts focus on understanding murine reconstitution following transplantation, use of a peptide polymer to block MHC class II recognition of minor histocompatibility antigens, use of T cell engineering to prevent graft-versus-host disease at the same time preserving a graft-versus-malignancy effect.
Publications
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Okamoto S, Iida M, Hamad N, Duarte FB, Sureda A, Srivastava A, et al. American Society of Transplantation and Cellular Therapy International Affair Committee: Report of the Third Workshop on Global Perspective to Access to Transplantation at the 2022 Tandem Meeting. Transplant Cell Ther. 2023 Jul;29(7):410–7.Poe JC, Fang J, Zhang D, Lee MR, DiCioccio RA, Su H, et al. Single-cell landscape analysis unravels molecular programming of the human B cell compartment in chronic GVHD. JCI Insight. 2023 Jun 8;8(11).Nguyen CL, Markey KA, Miltiadous O, Dai A, Waters N, Sadeghi K, et al. High-resolution analyses of associations between medications, microbiome, and mortality in cancer patients. Cell. 2023 Jun 8;186(12):2705-2718.e17.Majaliwa E, Smith ER, Cotache-Condor C, Rice H, Gwanika Y, Canick J, et al. Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Care at a Tertiary Hospital in Northern Tanzania: A Retrospective Study. JCO Glob Oncol. 2023 Jun;9:e2200263.
See more publications at Scholars@Duke