Aguirre De Cubas, Ph.D.
Understanding how cancers interact with the immune system to identify molecular determinants of immunogenicity and developing strategies to modulate immunogenicity to enhance response to immune checkpoint blockade therapies. My program's second focus is to understand how commonly mutated chromatin modifiers/remodelers, namely SETD2, BAP1 and PBRM1, contribute to the development and progression of kidney, lung and skin cancers and leveraging synthetic lethal dependencies created by loss-of-function of these genes to develop rational, targeted therapies
Research Interest
I am an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). My research program is focused on 1) understanding how cancers interact with the immune system, 2) identifying molecular determinants of tumoral immunogenicity and antigenicity, and 3) understanding how commonly lost epigenetic modifiers (SETD2, PBRM1, and BAP1) modify the tumor microenvironment and contribute to progression of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). To accomplish these goals, my research program operates at both dry and wet lab levels and brings a balanced skillset in genomics and bioinformatics, as well as cancer biology and immunology. Successful completion of this research will contribute to our knowledge of the mechanisms behind response to ICB in ccRCC. These novel discoveries would provide critical biological insights that ultimately could lead to novel clinical treatment strategies for ccRCC.