MIHAELA CHIVU-ECONOMESCU is senior researcher I and head of SEDI department.
Expertise includes Oncology, Immunotherapy, Intracellular signaling, Targeted antitumor therapy, Immunology, and Immune response during viral infections.
Research interests: (1) Uncovering applications of liquid biopsies biomarkers to monitor tumor growth and the efficacy of cancer therapies (sPD-L1); (2) Identification of new biomarkers (KRT17, Serpin-1, ETS-1, sPD-L1, collagen family, and other tissue matrix remodeling proteins) involved in the progression and metastasis of gastrointestinal cancers, which have the potential to become new targets for tumor therapy; (3) In vitro and in vivo validation of cancer biomarkers by knock-in / knock-out gene expression experiments; (4) Development of in vitro and ex vivo models for immunotherapy and targeted therapy research, combining both approaches as a new clinical strategy in gastrointestinal cancers.
Additional research interests are: (1) humoral and cellular immune response following COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 natural infection; (2) development of animal model for various tumour type (glioblastoma, gastric and pancreatic cancer, acute myeloid leukaemia); (3) development of different culture systems for ex vivo expansion of human hematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and hepatocytes trans-differentiation; (4) studies on human hematopoietic stem cells engraftment capability after transplant, and also development of new treatments for soft tissue defects in nude mice using mesenchymal stem cells-loaded scaffolds.
Current projects are aiming to explore tumor microenvironment in gastric cancer molecular subtypes, analyzing immune checkpoints expression combined with immune cell infiltrate, and also to study the combinatorial effect of targeted therapy with immunotherapy, creating the unique opportunity to personalize novel immunotherapies based on disease subtype.
