Holt Lab

The main focus in our lab (located at the BC Cancer Research Institute) is understanding and potentiating the anti-cancer immune response.

Increasingly cancer is being seen as a disease of immune failure, and in the field considerable effort is being focused on evoking and/or potentiating anti-tumor immunity. In our group, we do basic research, pre-clinical research and clinical (Phase I/II) studies focussed on genetically enginerring T cells to target cancer cells. We also develop mRNA vaccines against "Oncomicrobes and we use high-throughput genomic, proteomic and bioinformatic methods to probe the cellular immune system, with a focus on antigen discovery. In addition to immunology, we also touch on aspects of microbiome research, brain research and evolutionary biology in our group

For more details on current research projects, visit our research lab website.

Email: 

ROBERT HOLT
rholt@bcgsc.ca
rah6@sfu.ca

Lab Room:

BC Cancer Research Insitute

 

Selected Publications

  • Rive CM, Yung E, Dreolini L, Woodsworth DJ, Holt RA. Selective B cell depletion upon infusion of replication-incompetent anti-CD19 CAR lentivirus. BioRxiv.
  • Rive CM, Yung E, Hughes CS, Brown SD, Sharma G, Dreolini L, Warren C, Karasinska JM, Loree JM, Yapp DT, Morin GB, Renouf DJ, Schaeffer DF, Turcotte S and Holt RA. Recombinant T cell receptors specific for HLA-A*02:01-restricted neoepitopes containing KRAS codon 12 hotspot mutations. BioRxiv
  • Cochrane K, Robinson AV, Holt RA, Allen-Vercoe E. A survey of Fusobacterium nucleatum genes modulated by host cell infection. Microbial Genomics. 2020 Feb;6(2):e000300. doi: 10.1099/mgen.0.000300.. PMID: 31661053
  • Sharma G, Rive C and Holt RA. Rapid selection and identification of functional CD8+ T-cell epitopes from large peptide coding libraries.  Nature Communications. 2019 Oct 7;10(1):4553. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12444-7. PMID: 31591401
  • Holt RA. Immunogenomics: a foundation for intelligent immune design.Genome Medicine. 2015;7:116. doi:10.1186/s13073-015-0247-y. Read more.

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