Research Areas

Dr. Cliona Rooney’s research interests are immunotherapies for virus and non-virus-associated malignancies and diseases. In protocols developed with Dr. Helen Heslop, Dr. Malcolm Brenner, Dr. Stephen Gottschalk and Dr. Catherine Bollard, about 150 patients have received EBV or antigen-specific cytotoxic T-cells. These have prevented and cured Epstein-Barr virus-associated lymphoma in bone marrow transplant recipients produced mixed tumor responses, including complete remissions in patients with relapsed EBV-positive Hodgkin’s disease and nasopharyngeal carcinoma and have produced clinical remission in chronic-active EBV infections. In the research laboratory, she is developing methods for the activation and expansion of antigen-specific CTLs for the treatment of non-viral cancers, investigating ways to render CTL resistant to immune evasion strategies used by tumor cells to grow in an immunocompetent host and developing means to induce antigen-specific tolerance.