The Mundy-Bosse Lab’s research experts work collaboratively, both nationally and in the lab, to understand and define the mechanisms that drive innate immune cell defects in patients with hematological malignancies.

They travel around the world to collaborate with other cancer researchers, scientists and clinicians and to continue learning from patients who receive treatment different from that used in the United States. This information sharing and international collaboration leads to synergistic, groundbreaking advancements in understanding the biology of disease progression while promoting the development of new immunological treatments for improved patient care.

Currently working in the lab to investigate how the innate immune system is dysregulated in hematological diseases, the Mundy-Bosse Lab team believes they are close to achieving results that can actually be applied in the clinic within a couple of years.

Breakthroughs and Discoveries

The OSUCCC – James Mundy-Bosse Lab is dedicated to understanding basic questions of how the immune system is built and what goes wrong when hematological malignances are present. Their research focuses on discovering innovative ways to improve treatments for hematological diseases long-term.

The team considers questions that look at how the immune system develops normally, and what goes wrong in the setting of malignancies. One particular area of research currently involves a specific transcription factor called the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AHR).

The AHR pathway is known to be critical for the development of multiple types of immune cells, and recently the Mundy-Bosse research group described how the AHR pathway is aberrantly activated in the setting of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They are now studying how AHR activation in AML can impact a key component of the innate immune system called natural killer (NK) cells.

When AHR is activated in mature NK cells, their ability to develop and function is blocked. How this effects AML progression and relapse are active areas of scientific research.

While many of the studies in the Mundy-Bosse group focus on restoring NK cell and other innate lymphoid cell function, another focus of the group is on understanding what drives NK cell malignancies such as extranodal NK/T cell lymphoma (ENKTL), a highly fatal form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

ENKTL is uniformly Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) positive and affects individuals of East Asian and Latin American heritage. Despite the implementation of intensive combinatorial chemotherapies, most patients with advanced ENKTL die of the disease, highlighting the critical need to better understand the biology driving ENKTL. The Mundy-Bosse group has teamed with a group of experts both within The Ohio State Univeristy and globally to develop better models of ENKTL in order to design improved therapeutic options for this devastating disease.

Additionally, the Mundy-Bosse Lab works to develop small molecular inhibitors to improve restoration of innate immunity following stem cell transplantation and in the setting of AML. Understanding how new therapies impact a patient’s immune system may be critical to restore immune surveillance and to achieve durable remissions and curative treatments for cancer patients.

In fact, this team’s groundbreaking research has already received several grants to further explore this pathway.

Current Grants

• NCI K22 Career Transition Award
• AACR-Incyte Corporation Career Development Award for Immuno-oncology Research for “Evasion of Innate Immunity by miR-29b Modulation”
• Pelotonia Idea Grant (with co-investigator Lapo Alinari, MD, PhD): “New Therapies for Mantle Cell Lymphoma”
• Pelotonia Idea Grant: “The Role of AHR in Mediating Innate Immune Evasion in AML”
• Pelotonia Intramural Research Program: “Discovery and Targeting the Epigenetic Blockade in EBV+ Extranodal NK/T Cell Lymphoma”