Joint Program in Transfusion Medicine -
Faculty

Contact information
Cell Manipulation Core Facility
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana 530
44 Binney Street
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-632-2251

Education
M.D., 1995, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA

Research Interests
Dr. Kao’s research is currently focused on the development of clinical grade cellular therapy for the treatment of malignant diseases. They include the use of immunomagnetic positive or negative selection of CD34+ or CD8+ cells in the setting of allogeneic bone marrow transplant to prevent the occurrence and severity of GVHD. However, most recently, she also became involved in the cellular processing of tumor vaccine production for Phase I clinical trials. Two general types of tumor vaccines are currently been processed in her laboratory for clinical use. The first type involves the generation of autologous Dendritic cells from monocytes for treatment of melanoma. The generated Dendritic cells can then be pulsed with tumor antigen peptides or genetically engineered to secrete common tumor antigens, such as gp100 and MART-1 for melanoma. Dendritic cells have been shown to be superb antigen presenting cells, and when appropriate antigen was presented to T cell receptor in the right environment, both humoral and cellular immune response can be enhanced or activated. Assuming the lack or immune response to tumor cells is due to the absence or defect in antigen presentation, manipulated dendritic cells which are activated to present tumor cell antigens should boost the immunity of cancer patients to cause tumor killing or to prevent tumor recurrence. Recently, she assisted in the development of a new protocol using allogenic dendritic cells with DLI (donor lymphocyte infusion) hoping to improve the effect of Graft versus Tumor for patients with recurrence of disease after allogeneic bone marrow or stem cell transplant.