Cellular Immunotherapy Program Team
Cellular Immunotherapy Program
The mission of the Mass General Cellular Immunotherapy Program is to invent, develop, administer, and understand engineered immune effector cells.
Lead by Marcela Maus, MD, PhD, the Cellular Immunotherapy Program brings together physicians and laboratory scientists focused on immune cell engineering and its clinical effects.
Leadership

Marcela Maus, MD, PhD
Director, Cellular Immunotherapy Program, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Marcela Maus, MD, PhD, is Director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program and a member of the Center for Cancer Immunology at Mass General. Her work aims to understand and engineer novel forms of cellular therapies – using cells normally produced by our bodies – to treat patients with cancer. Cellular therapies have achieved unprecedented, durable responses in some blood cancers, particularly CAR-T cell therapy in acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These results demonstrate the tremendous power of engineering the immune system to recognize and eliminate tumor cells, and effect long-term clinical benefit. However, to be able to harness this power of the cellular immune system in other cancers, there is a need to identify and validate new targets, and to develop ways of enhancing both the safety and effectiveness of imperfect targets. Dr. Maus is building the Cellular Immunotherapy Program to create new and improved treatments for patients with leukemia, myeloma and brain tumors initially, but hopes to expand the program over time to cover numerous tumor types.
Maus Laboratory
The goal of the Maus lab is to design and evaluate next generation genetically-modified (CAR) T cells as immunotherapy in patients with cancer.
Clinical Investigators
To bring therapies to patients, a dedicated team of early-phase clinical investigators in oncology play a central role in cancer immunology at Mass General.

Jeremy Slade Abramson, MD
Director, Jon and Jo Ann Hagler Center for Lymphoma
Mass General Cancer Center

Yi-Bin Chen, MD
Director, BMT Program
Mass General Cancer Center

Amir Fathi, MD
Director, Center for Leukemia
Mass General Cancer Center

Justin F. Gainor, MD
Center for Thoracic Cancers
Mass General Cancer Center

Tim Graubert, MD
Director, Hematologic Malignancy Program
Mass General Cancer Center

Marcela Maus, MD, PhD
Director, Cellular Immunotherapy Program
Mass General Cancer Center

Noopur Suresh Raje, MD
Director, Center for Multiple Myeloma
Mass General Cancer Center

Ryan J. Sullivan, MD
Center for Melanoma
Mass General Cancer Center
Immune Monitoring Laboratory
The Immune Monitoring Laboratory is an essential and integral part of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program. The laboratory provides expertise to enable translational clinical studies of immune-based therapies, based on the highest standard operating systems.
Blood Transfusion Service
The Blood Transfusion Service is an FDA-licensed, full-service blood bank that consists of the Blood Donor Center, the Outpatient Infusion Unit, the Apheresis Unit, the Transfusion Service, and the Histocompatibility (HLA) Laboratory.

Robert Makar, MD, PhD
Associate Director, Blood Transfusion Service
Massachusetts General Hospital
Cellular Therapy and Transplantation Laboratory
The Mass General Cancer Center’s Cellular Therapeutics and Transplantation Laboratory (CTTL) is comprised of a team of medical technologists that provide support to the Bone Marrow Transplant Program. These technologists play an integral part in stem cell processing, transplant infusions and bone marrow harvests.

Thomas Richard Spitzer, MD
CTTL Medical Director
Mass General Cancer Center
participated in Clinical Trials at the Mass General Cancer Center last year
This helped lead to new knowledge and breakthrough therapies.
Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research
The scientific engine for discovery for the Mass General Cancer Center.