Weiskopf Lab

Cancerous tumors are diverse communities of cells, which in addition to cancer cells may contain vascular cells, immune cells, and connective tissue-generating fibroblasts. Cancer cells can manipulate other cell types to help the cancer grow and spread, while cancer therapies can manipulate other cell types to prevent cancer growth or even kill cancer cells. As researchers learn more about how cancer cells interact with other cell types and components of the tumor microenvironment, they not only learn more about how cancer progresses, but also discover new opportunities to treat cancer.

Whitehead Institute’s physician-scientists—researchers who also practice medicine—are highly motivated by the goal of improving patients’ outcomes. What drew them to Whitehead Institute is the possibility of making paradigm-shifting discoveries that can lead to major advances in medicine.

Cancer cells decorate themselves with the CD47 protein, signaling the immune system to stand down. Whitehead Institute Valhalla Fellow Kipp Weiskopf and colleagues have developed a novel drug screen, pinpointing which cancer therapies — when combined with CD47-blocking antibodies — fare best at rallying the immune system against lung cancer cells.

Asaf Maoz is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Valhalla Fellow Kipp Weiskopf’s lab studying new immunotherapy strategies to treat cancer. He is also a clinical fellow in medical oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Mass General Hospital. We sat down with Asaf to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Tobiloba Oni and Kipp Weiskopf are Valhalla Fellows at Whitehead Institute who are researching ways to harness our natural defenses to combat cancer, an approach called immunotherapy.

Kipp Weiskopf—who is identifying ways to prompt macrophages to fight cancer—has been named a Valhalla Fellow.

Weiskopf will be studying how existing FDA-approved drugs could be repurposed to reduce the severity and mortality of the disease.