“Building Virus-specific Cytotoxic lymphocytes after Human Stem Cell Transplant”

The Center for Infectious Diseases and the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases co-sponsor a weekly conference series featuring distinguished clinicians and scientists from UNC, local universities and other national and international institutions. The topics are varied and appeal to not only infectious disease specialists, but also professionals in epidemiology, public health, microbiology, biostatistics and other global health-related disciplines.

Dr. Bollard’s research interests involve using cytotoxic T cells (CTL) to treat viral and malignant diseases.  Dr. Bollard is a principal investigator on clinical trials assessing the safety of adoptively transferred donor-derived virus-specific CTL and genetically modified virus-specific CTL for the prevention and treatment of viral infection post allogeneic stem cell and cord blood transplant.  Dr. Bollard is evaluating the efficacy of tumor-specific CTL in patients with relapsed EBV positive Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.  Further, she is developing gene therapy strategies to target the cancer stem cell in lymphoma and to counteract tumor immune evasion mechanisms to enhance the efficacy of adoptive immunotherapy protocols.  Finally, she is exploring the feasibility of expanding T cells targeting non-EBV tumor-associated antigens for the treatment of EBV-negative lymphomas.