Richard T O'Neil PhD
Faculty email addresses should not be used to seek medical advice or to make medical appointments. Please visit
MyChart for medical appointments or to contact your provider.
Biography
Our
research program is aimed at leveraging the immune system to improve
health outcomes for people with disease. As a molecular biologist, my
primary focus is developing engineered T cells as therapeutic platforms.
We are building a collaborative translational research program at MUSC
focused on developing and studying engineered cellular therapeutics.
By taking advantage of the flexibility
and cost effectiveness of transposon-based genome engineering we
systematically explore the utility of novel cell therapy platforms in
immune competent murine models of cancer. Specifically, we examine the
use of T cells as peptide delivery platforms; delivering chemokine and
cytokine payloads to solid tumors aimed at eliciting an adaptive immune
response to tumors. We also evaluate methods to improve the safety and
efficacy of engineered cell therapies with the aim of expanding adoption
of these living therapeutics into the clinic. These studies make
extensive use of molecular biology, flow cytometry, single cell
transcriptomics, and in vivo imaging.