Irina Balyasnikova
Northwestern University, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain tumor that remains incurable, with most patients surviving less than about 15 months. Treatments that recruit the immune system have helped patients with cancers outside the brain, but have not yet worked for brain tumors.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
glioblastoma
brain metastasis
breast cancer
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Test how overexpression of SEC61G, part of the endoplasmic reticulum channel that threads new proteins into the secretory pathway, works with the growth-signaling MAPK pathway to protect glioma cells from killing by cytotoxic T cells.
- Determine whether SEC61G helps build an immune-suppressing tumor microenvironment that blocks T-cell responses in glioblastoma, and test SEC61G-targeting plus T-cell therapy regimens in mouse and human tumor models.
- Measure whether a systemically injected IL13Ra2-targeting bi-specific T cell engager needs T cells themselves to enter and stay in brain tumors, by tracking tumor uptake, retention and whole-body biodistribution.
- Define how the IL13Ra2 engager primes host immunity beyond direct tumor killing, and identify a dosing regimen in mouse and human glioblastoma models suitable for later clinical testing.
- Optimize combined single-photon emission microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging, with nanoparticle-labeled cells, to follow neural stem cells non-invasively inside brain tissue at high sensitivity and resolution.
- Map where antibody-secreting neural stem cells migrate in mice carrying breast cancer brain metastases, and test whether whole-brain irradiation changes their distribution.
More about the research
Work here asks two linked questions: why brain tumors resist immune attack, and how immune-activating molecules and cell carriers can be delivered into the brain and tracked there. The projects span tumor genetics, engineered antibodies, stem cell delivery vehicles, and imaging in mouse models of brain cancer and of breast cancer that has spread to the brain.
Why it matters
Brain tumors and brain metastases offer patients few options: glioblastoma survival is under about 15 months, and women with multiple breast cancer brain metastases often have only whole-brain radiation. Identifying SEC61G as a resistance gene could provide a drug target to make immunotherapy work in the brain, the IL13Ra2 engager could become a treatment candidate for this and other IL13Ra2-bearing tumors, and the imaging platform could make stem-cell-delivered therapies testable and safer before they reach patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Targeting SEC61 complex to overcome resistance to immunotherapy in GBM
NIH · Jan 2025 – Dec 2029
Spatial and Temporal Tracking of Neural Stem Cells Migration to Brain Metastases of Breast Cancer using High Resolution Imaging
NIH · Dec 2024 – Nov 2028
Understanding the Behavior of Novel IL13Ralpha2-directed T cell Engager for GBM
NIH · Apr 2021 – Aug 2026
Closest labs
Claudia Gravekamp
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Characterize engineered Listeria carrying tetanus toxoid in brain tumors, measuring where the bacteria distribute throughout the body of live mice and testing their ability to infect and kill glioblastoma cells in culture.
Dolores Hambardzumyan
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Map how glioblastoma subtype and location shape monocyte and neutrophil infiltration, using single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial multiomics and multiplex flow cytometry in mice carrying human tumor-driving mutations.
David Akhavan
University of Kansas, KS·Biomedical Engineering
Develop nanocarriers, tiny drug-carrying particles, that can be loaded into CAR T cells, which are engineered tumor-targeting immune cells, to create a platform for delivering drugs into glioblastoma.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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