Dr. Hyun-Sung Lee Awarded Pilot Funding for Mesothelioma Research

Dr. Hyun-Sung Lee, assistant professor of surgery in the Division of General Thoracic Surgery, has been awarded a 2022 Pilot Award of $50,000 by the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center Grant Review Committee. His project is titled “Proteogenomic Intratumoral Heterogeneity of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma.” The goal with this funding is to test if proteogenomic intratumoral heterogeneity analysis of multi-regional spatial immune contextures can provide the rational design of combinatorial therapies to overcome immunoresistance in malignant pleural mesothelioma.

In early 2021, Dr. Lee launched the Systems Onco-Immunology Laboratory in the Division of General Thoracic Surgery to investigate cancer-immune system networks through the integration of state-of-the-art single-cell platforms and inform the design of novel approaches to immunotherapy. The SOIL aims to use single-cell multi-omics data and biospecimen samples from multiple cohorts to help predict response/resistance and immunotoxicities to immunotherapy before or during treatment, allowing patients to have precision immunotherapy. The SOIL is a hub for translational oncology research projects and unites an interdisciplinary team of surgeons, medical oncologists, immunologists, bioinformaticians, and biostatisticians who are conducting novel research in the field of onco-immunology.