Marcela Valderrama Maus

This paper introduces a lenalidomide-inducible suicide switch for gene- and cell-based therapies that enables safe and effective cell depletion without detectable leakiness.

This study engineers CAR-T cells to secrete KLK5, a protease that remodels the mucin-rich glycocalyx, enhancing CAR-T cell function and tumor control in xenograft models.

The paper introduces a microfluidic T-Chip for one-step clinical-scale T-cell purification from blood products, achieving high purity, viability, and recovery of CD3+ T cells for CAR T-cell manufacturing.

This study identifies common survival mechanisms between drug-tolerant persisters and immunotherapy persisters, showing they share reduced mitochondrial apoptotic sensitivity and cross-resistance to therapies.

This study shows that affinity-matured CD72-targeting nanobody CAR T-cells improve in vitro efficacy against CD72-low tumors but show limited in vivo benefit, while CD72 expression remains stable after CD19 resistance in B-cell malignancies.

The paper uses in vivo CRISPR screens to identify genes affecting CAR T cell persistence and function in multiple myeloma, finding CDKN1B as a key regulator of late-stage CAR T cell fitness.

The paper identifies CD43 as a glyco-immune checkpoint that inhibits human macrophage phagocytosis, showing that O-linked glycosylation and sialylation pathways regulate this process in AML.

This paper identifies glycocalyx thickness as a targetable physical phenotype and demonstrates that castanospermine reduces it, enhancing CAR-T cell efficacy against gastric cancer.

The paper uses single-cell sequencing to analyze CAR signaling and identifies ICD architectures that promote durable in vivo persistence in liquid tumors.