Cristina Maccalli, PhD

Dr. Cristina Maccalli is a Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of Immune Biological Therapy, Translational Medicine Department, Research Branch, Sidra Medicine.
Her expertise is in the field of immunology, tumor immunology and immunotherapy. She obtained in 1990 a Master degree in Biological Sciences and then, in 1996, a Ph.D. in Applied Genetics at the University of Milan, Italy. She has carried out her post-doctoral research programs at the National Cancer Institute in Milan, Italy and, then, as visiting fellow at the Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA. From 2003 until mid 2007 she worked as investigator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanita’ Rome, Italy. In 2007 she joined as Senior Investigator the Unit of Immuno-biotherapy of Melanoma and Solid Tumors at the San Raffaele Foundation Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy where she contributed to novel studies aimed at the immunological characterization of cancer stem cells, the development of Phase I/II immunotherapy clinical studies and immunomonitoring of cancer patients. In October 2013 she contributed to the development of the Laboratory of the Italian Network of Biotherapy of Tumors (NIBIT)/University Hospital of Siena, Italy dedicated to ImmunOncology (IO) studies and the immunomonitoring of patients undergoing immunotherapy treatments. In October 2015 she joined the Research Department at Sidra Medicine.
She is author/co-author of 67 original peer-reviewed publications and 6-chapter books.
She is the Editor of the section of Translational Cancer Biology of JTM and of the Section Immune Response of Advances in Cancer Biology-Metastasis (Elsevier). She serves as member of Biomarker Working Group (Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer, SITC, USA). In 2020 she has been awarded of the SITC- ”Team Science Recognition Award”.

Our team is dedicated to the development of personalized medicine approaches, based on immunology, immunotherapy, gene and immune cell-based therapies for cancer patients. Main focus is on the manufacturing, molecular and functional characterization of T lymphocytes engineered with Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) for targeting of hematological and solid tumors. The principle objective of this study is to validate the “off-the-shelf” clinical grade manufacturing of CAR-T cells to render this type of therapies accessible to large number of cancer patients including local pediatric patients in Qatar. Additional ongoing studies are aimed at: 1. the isolation and immunological characterization of cancer stem cells from solid tumors to understand the mechanisms of tumor dormancy and of orchestrating cancer patients’ clinical outcome and responsiveness to therapies. 2. The development of novel cell-based treatments for targeting cancer stem cells, representing the components of tumor resistant to therapeutic treatments. 3.The identification of biomarkers predictive of the risk to develop colorectal cancer for patients with inflammatory bowel disease and of their clinical outcome.

Asma Al-Sulaiti MSc.