Heslop

Gianpietro Dotti, M.D.
Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Gianpietro Dotti, Associate Professor, joined Baylor College of Medicine in 2001. He received his M.D. degree at University of Milan in Milan, Italy, in 1989 with subsequent clinical training and board certification in Hematology at University of Parma in Parma, Italy in 1995.

From 1996 to 1999, Dr. Dotti received postdoctoral research training in Molecular biology at Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy where he developed technologies to detect minimal residual disease in hematological malignancies and studied molecular mechanisms of post-transplant lymphomas. In 2000, Dr. Dotti was appointed Assistant professor at Department of Hematology, Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo. In 2002 he joined Dr. Brenner's group at Baylor College of Medicine, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. He was promoted to Assistant professor in 2005 and then to Associate professor in 2007.

At Baylor, Dr. Dotti developed immunotherapy strategies to treat patients with hematologic malignancies including chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In particular, he cloned a novel chimeric antigen receptor targeting the light chain of human immunoglobulins. This chimeric molecule engrafted in human T-lymphocytes allows a selective elimination of tumor cells expressing the kappa-light chain of human immunoglobulin sparing the normal compartment of B-lymphocytes expressing the lambda-light chain. This project is currently part of a SPORE-lymphoma project at Baylor, and Dr. Dotti is implementing a Phase I clinical trial to treat patients with kappa-positive B cell malignancies including chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Dr. Dotti will continue to implement this strategy to further potentiate the function of T-cells inserting the IL-15 cytokine. He will also enhance the safety of the approach including a specific suicide gene. Dr. Dotti's awards include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/Clinical Scientist development award, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Translational research grant and three NIH grants in which Dr. Dotti is acting as project leader or co-investigator.

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