Melody Smith, MD

Bone marrow transplant (BMT) is a treatment approach where cells from a healthy donor are given to a patient with blood cancer who has not responded to other treatments. Unfortunately, there are risks to this procedure such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which occurs if the cells from the donor attack the "foreign" patient tissue; this can cause serious organ damage and is life-threatening. Melody is investigating an approach to decrease GVHD while also maintaining the benefits of BMT, specifically graft versus tumor (GVT). She utilizes T immune cells from the donor and enables them to express a B cell marker, CD19; these cells can induce complete remissions in patients with CD19-positive leukemia and lymphoma. Administration of these cells following BMT mediates persistent GVT and decreased GVHD. Given that donor T cells are the culprits that cause GVHD, the finding of decreased GVHD in her model was paradoxical. She will now translate these pre-clinical findings to a clinical trial in order to benefit patients.