Maria Castro, PhD
Co-Director, Board of Governors Gene Therapeutics Research Institute
Dr. Castro is Co-Director of the Board of Governors Gene Therapeutics Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai. Dr. Castro is also Professor of Medicine and Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr Castro has recently been awarded the Medallion's Group Endowed Chair in Gene Therapeutics at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She currently serves as a permanent member and consultant at a study section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health.
Dr Castro's research program focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular immune-mediated mechanisms which elicit brain tumor regression with the ultimate goal of developing novel therapeutics and translate them into human clinical trials. The brain is an immune privilege site, which lacks both antigen presenting cells (APCs) and lymphatic drainage, thus hampering effective anti-tumor immune responses. My group is engineering the brain tumor microenvironment utilizing in vivo gene transfer technologies to overcome immune privilege in the central nervous system. We are also remodeling the brain microvasculature using tissue engineering technologies to create lymphatic drainage within the brain parenchyma to facilitate migration of immune cells to the draining lymph nodes. We are studying the infiltration of immune cells into the tumor mass and the migration of activated APCs from the brain into the draining lymph nodes.
To this end we are using state of the art ex-vivo and in vivo imaging technologies, i.e., confocal microscopy, two photon imaging and laser scanning micro-dissection combined with molecular techniques and fluorescently labeled probes. We have uncovered that Toll receptor (TLR) signaling triggered by endogenous tumor derived TLR ligands plays a critical role in the migration of APCs into the tumor mass and in mounting a tumor antigen specific systemic immune response. Our laboratory has recently engineered a single gutless adenovirus based, multi-modality imaging platform, which will enable us to assess disease progression and therapeutic efficacy in vivo from mouse rodent cancer models all the way to human patients. This imaging platform encodes molecules which will allow fluorescence, bioluminescence, MRI (without the need of any contrast agents) and PET imaging modalities all under stringent regulation using a genetic switch sensitive to small molecules. and Journal of Neuromolecular Medicine. She currently serves as a consultant in the study section of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institutes of Health.
Dr Castro's research program is currently funded by the NIH and endowments. Dr Castro has published over 200 research articles, reviews and book chapters in high impact peer-reviewed journals, e.g. Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Medicine USA, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, The Journal of Virology, The Journal of Neuroscience, and Cancer Research amongst many others. Dr Castro serves on the editorial boards of Gene Therapy, Current Gene Therapy, Journal of Endocrinology, Journal of Molecular Endocrinology and Journal of Neuromolecular Medicine.
