NEWS
June 2020
DFCI Blog Post- What Researchers Need to Learn About COVID-19 — And How You Can Help
Many millions of people around the globe have had COVID-19. The vast majority of people have recovered, but several hundreds of thousands of people have died from the virus. This pandemic has had a profound impact on our lives.
Here is what we’re aiming to learn about COVID-19 — and how you can potentially help aid in the search for a cure or vaccine.
Read the blog post here
May 2020
DFCI Blog Post- COVID-19 Antibody Tests: What We Know and What We Don’t
There is great hope surrounding the release of COVID-19 antibody tests, which could determine whether a person has developed immunity to the virus. We would all benefit if the test results could somehow aid in getting our lives back to some semblance of pre-pandemic days, including getting more of our healthcare providers and staff back to work.
If all goes well (and it is still unknown if it will go well), the antibody tests can have some immediate value to individuals and the world. The tests could certainly empower individuals and their health care providers to make informed decisions about their risk of infection and of spreading the virus. Still, there are many unknown factors at this point.
Read the blog post here
May 2020
Marasco Lab is a project recipient of the MassCPR research for proposal on COVID-19 work
To address the most pressing challenges of the pandemic, the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR), a multi-institutional initiative convened by Harvard Medical School to combat the disease and prepare for future outbreaks, is announcing over $16.5 million in funding to support 62 high-impact research projects.
Read the press release here
May 2020
Marasco Lab research on antibody therapy for COVID-19 featured in Washington Post article
Much of this research already has a head start based on experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Marasco developed a library of 27 billion human antibodies from blood samples taken from hospital staffers in the late 1990s, which he then used to develop experimental therapies for SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Read the story here
May 2020
Dr. Marasco comments on Mesoblast's stem cell treatment for COVID-19 in Forbes article
Using Mesoblast’s treatment for coronavirus patients with ARDS “has a rationale behind it” says Dr. Wayne Marasco, who’s studied a number of coronavirus diseases and is currently researching potential antibody treatments for COVID-19.
Read the story here
April 2020
Dr. Marasco featured in article by Forbes contributor, Dr. William A. Hazeltine, on missteps with COVID-19 and future biothreats
"Had his [Wayne's] work been carried to fruition we might have a proven drug available to fight the current pandemic, given the similarity of the SARS and Covid-19 viruses and the known ability of some SARS monoclonal antibodies to bind to the Covid-19 virus. Wayne's work too was shelved for lack of interest and funding."
Read the story here
April 2020
Marasco Lab at Forefront of Development of Antibody Therapy for COVID-19 at DFCI
As scientists race to develop and test new treatments for COVID-19, Dana-Farber’s Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, and his lab team are bringing one of the world’s most formidable resources to the effort: a “library” of 27 billion human antibodies against viruses, bacteria, and other bodily invaders. The collection, created by Marasco and his associates in 1997 using blood samples from more than 57 Dana-Farber staff, has already had an illustrious history in the quest to tame viral disease outbreaks. In 2004, the researchers used it to create the first antibody therapy against SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a disease that affected nearly 10,000 people in 30 countries over a two-year period. In 2012, they used it to produce the first antibody therapy for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), which spread from Saudi Arabia to a range of other countries.
Read the story here
March 2020
Dr. Marasco discusses the role of convalescent plasma in COVID-19 treatment in a Washington Post article
“Convalescent plasma has a real role — this has been going on for over 100 years. We know this stuff works,” said Wayne A. Marasco, an infectious disease physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “If you do this right and harvest plasma from someone who has undergone infection, you can get protective antibodies that can be infused in other people.”
Read the story here
March 2020
Dr. Marasco featured in Harvard Medical School story on the COVID-19 pandemic and his expertise on designer antibodies
Wayne Marasco knows coronaviruses. Marasco, professor of medicine at HMS and an immunologist-oncologist with training in infectious diseases, was actively involved in the SARS outbreaks of 2003 and 2004 and in the MERS outbreak of 2012. An inherent challenge in novel diseases is that early in the emergence of a pathogen, researchers are often unable to obtain blood samples from infected patients quickly enough. This lag curtails their ability to begin work on treatments that rely on materials harvested from the blood of infected patients, such as antibodies. To bypass that hurdle, about 20 years ago, Marasco built a library of human antibodies—27 billion of them and growing.
Read the story here
February 2020
Dr. Marasco discusses his previous antibody therapy work on MERS and SARS, and current focus on antibody therapies effective against SARS-CoV-2 in Harvard Magazine
Marasco currently collaborates with an international team that can perform studies—including some that can’t be done at Harvard—thanks to ready access to a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory and to non-human primates for testing. The team is working to develop antibody therapies effective against SARS-CoV-2, but Marasco cautions that the situation “is pretty worrisome” with a disease that has a “long latency period when people show no symptoms,” and when public-health officials cannot identify source cases (as in Italy and in the single case of apparent community transmission in California reported February 26).
Read the story here
June 2019
OncoSec Receives Exclusive Licensing Rights from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to CAR T-Cell Therapies for the Treatment of Solid Tumor Cancers
OncoSec Medical Incorporated, a company developing late-stage intratumoral cancer immunotherapies, has entered into a collaboration with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a world-leading cancer research and treatment institution, and The Marasco Laboratory, a cutting-edge CAR T-cell research laboratory led by Wayne Marasco, M.D. The collaboration seeks to develop a bispecific CAR T requiring engagement of two single-chain variable fragments before activation, limiting off-tumor toxicity.
Read the press release here
June 2017
GRANT AWARDED & PRESS RELEASE - CAR T-Cell Factories that Change the Tumor Microenvironment to Achieve RCC Cures
The Kidney Cancer Research Alliance (KCCure) has announced that the Marasco lab has received the 2017 KCCure Research Award, KCCure's first research grant. This is an exciting opportunity for all parties involved, as we are working diligently to bring chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy into the clinic.
Read the press release here.
September 2016
NEW PUBLICATION & PRESS RELEASE - A broadly neutralizing anti-influenza antibody reveals ongoing capacity of haemagglutinin-specific memory B cells to evolve
Understanding the natural evolution and structural changes involved in broadly neutralizing antibody (bnAb) development holds great promise for improving the design of prophylactic influenza vaccines. Here we report an haemagglutinin (HA) stem-directed bnAb, 3I14, isolated from human memory B cells, that utilizes a heavy chain encoded by the IGHV3-30 germline gene. MAb 3I14 binds and neutralizes groups 1 and 2 influenza A viruses and protects mice from lethal challenge. Analysis of VH and VL germline back-mutants reveals binding to H3 and H1 but not H5, which supports the critical role of somatic hypermutation in broadening the bnAb response. Moreover, a single VLD94N mutation improves the affinity of 3I14 to H5 by nearly 10-fold. These data provide evidence that memory B cell evolution can expand the HA subtype specificity. Our results further suggest that establishing an optimized memory B cell pool should be an aim of ‘universal’ influenza vaccine strategies.
Read the press release here
Ying Fu, Zhen Zhang, Jared Sheehan, Yuval Avnir, Callie Ridenour, Thomas Sachnik, Jiusong Sun, M. Jaber Hossain, Li-Mei Chen, Quan Zhu, Ruben O. Donis, Wayne A. Marasco. A broadly neutralizing anti-influenza antibody reveals ongoing capacity of haemagglutinin-specific memory B cells to evolve. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 12780 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12780
DFCI Blog Post- What Researchers Need to Learn About COVID-19 — And How You Can Help
Many millions of people around the globe have had COVID-19. The vast majority of people have recovered, but several hundreds of thousands of people have died from the virus. This pandemic has had a profound impact on our lives.
Here is what we’re aiming to learn about COVID-19 — and how you can potentially help aid in the search for a cure or vaccine.
Read the blog post here
May 2020
DFCI Blog Post- COVID-19 Antibody Tests: What We Know and What We Don’t
There is great hope surrounding the release of COVID-19 antibody tests, which could determine whether a person has developed immunity to the virus. We would all benefit if the test results could somehow aid in getting our lives back to some semblance of pre-pandemic days, including getting more of our healthcare providers and staff back to work.
If all goes well (and it is still unknown if it will go well), the antibody tests can have some immediate value to individuals and the world. The tests could certainly empower individuals and their health care providers to make informed decisions about their risk of infection and of spreading the virus. Still, there are many unknown factors at this point.
Read the blog post here
May 2020
Marasco Lab is a project recipient of the MassCPR research for proposal on COVID-19 work
To address the most pressing challenges of the pandemic, the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR), a multi-institutional initiative convened by Harvard Medical School to combat the disease and prepare for future outbreaks, is announcing over $16.5 million in funding to support 62 high-impact research projects.
Read the press release here
May 2020
Marasco Lab research on antibody therapy for COVID-19 featured in Washington Post article
Much of this research already has a head start based on experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Marasco developed a library of 27 billion human antibodies from blood samples taken from hospital staffers in the late 1990s, which he then used to develop experimental therapies for SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Read the story here
May 2020
Dr. Marasco comments on Mesoblast's stem cell treatment for COVID-19 in Forbes article
Using Mesoblast’s treatment for coronavirus patients with ARDS “has a rationale behind it” says Dr. Wayne Marasco, who’s studied a number of coronavirus diseases and is currently researching potential antibody treatments for COVID-19.
Read the story here
April 2020
Dr. Marasco featured in article by Forbes contributor, Dr. William A. Hazeltine, on missteps with COVID-19 and future biothreats
"Had his [Wayne's] work been carried to fruition we might have a proven drug available to fight the current pandemic, given the similarity of the SARS and Covid-19 viruses and the known ability of some SARS monoclonal antibodies to bind to the Covid-19 virus. Wayne's work too was shelved for lack of interest and funding."
Read the story here
April 2020
Marasco Lab at Forefront of Development of Antibody Therapy for COVID-19 at DFCI
As scientists race to develop and test new treatments for COVID-19, Dana-Farber’s Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, and his lab team are bringing one of the world’s most formidable resources to the effort: a “library” of 27 billion human antibodies against viruses, bacteria, and other bodily invaders. The collection, created by Marasco and his associates in 1997 using blood samples from more than 57 Dana-Farber staff, has already had an illustrious history in the quest to tame viral disease outbreaks. In 2004, the researchers used it to create the first antibody therapy against SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a disease that affected nearly 10,000 people in 30 countries over a two-year period. In 2012, they used it to produce the first antibody therapy for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), which spread from Saudi Arabia to a range of other countries.
Read the story here
March 2020
Dr. Marasco discusses the role of convalescent plasma in COVID-19 treatment in a Washington Post article
“Convalescent plasma has a real role — this has been going on for over 100 years. We know this stuff works,” said Wayne A. Marasco, an infectious disease physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “If you do this right and harvest plasma from someone who has undergone infection, you can get protective antibodies that can be infused in other people.”
Read the story here
March 2020
Dr. Marasco featured in Harvard Medical School story on the COVID-19 pandemic and his expertise on designer antibodies
Wayne Marasco knows coronaviruses. Marasco, professor of medicine at HMS and an immunologist-oncologist with training in infectious diseases, was actively involved in the SARS outbreaks of 2003 and 2004 and in the MERS outbreak of 2012. An inherent challenge in novel diseases is that early in the emergence of a pathogen, researchers are often unable to obtain blood samples from infected patients quickly enough. This lag curtails their ability to begin work on treatments that rely on materials harvested from the blood of infected patients, such as antibodies. To bypass that hurdle, about 20 years ago, Marasco built a library of human antibodies—27 billion of them and growing.
Read the story here
February 2020
Dr. Marasco discusses his previous antibody therapy work on MERS and SARS, and current focus on antibody therapies effective against SARS-CoV-2 in Harvard Magazine
Marasco currently collaborates with an international team that can perform studies—including some that can’t be done at Harvard—thanks to ready access to a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory and to non-human primates for testing. The team is working to develop antibody therapies effective against SARS-CoV-2, but Marasco cautions that the situation “is pretty worrisome” with a disease that has a “long latency period when people show no symptoms,” and when public-health officials cannot identify source cases (as in Italy and in the single case of apparent community transmission in California reported February 26).
Read the story here
June 2019
OncoSec Receives Exclusive Licensing Rights from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to CAR T-Cell Therapies for the Treatment of Solid Tumor Cancers
OncoSec Medical Incorporated, a company developing late-stage intratumoral cancer immunotherapies, has entered into a collaboration with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a world-leading cancer research and treatment institution, and The Marasco Laboratory, a cutting-edge CAR T-cell research laboratory led by Wayne Marasco, M.D. The collaboration seeks to develop a bispecific CAR T requiring engagement of two single-chain variable fragments before activation, limiting off-tumor toxicity.
Read the press release here
June 2017
GRANT AWARDED & PRESS RELEASE - CAR T-Cell Factories that Change the Tumor Microenvironment to Achieve RCC Cures
The Kidney Cancer Research Alliance (KCCure) has announced that the Marasco lab has received the 2017 KCCure Research Award, KCCure's first research grant. This is an exciting opportunity for all parties involved, as we are working diligently to bring chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy into the clinic.
Read the press release here.
September 2016
NEW PUBLICATION & PRESS RELEASE - A broadly neutralizing anti-influenza antibody reveals ongoing capacity of haemagglutinin-specific memory B cells to evolve
Understanding the natural evolution and structural changes involved in broadly neutralizing antibody (bnAb) development holds great promise for improving the design of prophylactic influenza vaccines. Here we report an haemagglutinin (HA) stem-directed bnAb, 3I14, isolated from human memory B cells, that utilizes a heavy chain encoded by the IGHV3-30 germline gene. MAb 3I14 binds and neutralizes groups 1 and 2 influenza A viruses and protects mice from lethal challenge. Analysis of VH and VL germline back-mutants reveals binding to H3 and H1 but not H5, which supports the critical role of somatic hypermutation in broadening the bnAb response. Moreover, a single VLD94N mutation improves the affinity of 3I14 to H5 by nearly 10-fold. These data provide evidence that memory B cell evolution can expand the HA subtype specificity. Our results further suggest that establishing an optimized memory B cell pool should be an aim of ‘universal’ influenza vaccine strategies.
Read the press release here
Ying Fu, Zhen Zhang, Jared Sheehan, Yuval Avnir, Callie Ridenour, Thomas Sachnik, Jiusong Sun, M. Jaber Hossain, Li-Mei Chen, Quan Zhu, Ruben O. Donis, Wayne A. Marasco. A broadly neutralizing anti-influenza antibody reveals ongoing capacity of haemagglutinin-specific memory B cells to evolve. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 12780 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12780
August 2016
Access to primary tissue for humanized mouse studies
The Marasco Lab has recently been approved to collect matched PBMCs and tumor tissues from renal cell carcinoma patients that are undergoing therapeutic nephrectomy! This is the second cancer, in addition to ovarian cancer, that we will have access to primary tissue for our in vitro and in vivo humanized mouse studies that will examine monoclonal antibodies and CAR T cells.
Access to primary tissue for humanized mouse studies
The Marasco Lab has recently been approved to collect matched PBMCs and tumor tissues from renal cell carcinoma patients that are undergoing therapeutic nephrectomy! This is the second cancer, in addition to ovarian cancer, that we will have access to primary tissue for our in vitro and in vivo humanized mouse studies that will examine monoclonal antibodies and CAR T cells.