Welcome to the Gumrukcu Lab

The Gumrukcu Lab studies gene and cell therapy particularly in the context of cancer (hematological and solid tumors), developing novel stem cell transplant methods for rare diseases, and innate molecular and cellular immunology in cancer and chronic infections like HIV/AIDS and HBV. The main objective is to develop better stem cell transplant and cell and gene therapy treatments for patients with cancer, rare genetic disorders, and infectious diseases.

In his past research, Dr Gumrukcu has developed a gene-modified autologous bone marrow transplant method that has a potential to facilitate increased engraftment in a non-myeloablative model. He has demonstrated the successful homing, engraftment and increased reconstitution capabilities of the modified bone marrow cells. The Gumrukcu Lab now focuses on creating disease-specific gene therapy vectors to harness the potential of this method. This has promising clinical use potential as an outpatient procedure in treating tens of different genetic disorders, as well as many cancers and HIV.

The current research in our laboratory focuses on studies to:

• Understand genetic and intracellular mechanisms that contribute to the resistance of long-term control of HIV
• Understand basic hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC) biology and its changes in the event of gene modification
• Understand clonal characteristics and clinical safety profile of gene-modified HSPCs
• Understand mechanisms that contribute to graft-versus-tumor, graft-versus-leukemia or graft-versus-virus effects in allogeneic stem cell transplants and adoptive cell therapy models
• Develop novel gene therapy methods and clinical protocols for cancer, HIV, and rare genetic diseases, especially enzyme deficiency disorders
• Investigate safer, less toxic autologous HSPC transplant methods for patients with nonmalignant diseases
• Develop novel gene and cell therapy protocols to induce rapid, disease-specific humoral and cellular immune responses in chronic infectious diseases
• Study viral replication machinery to develop gene therapies that develop novel molecular host defense mechanisms