Danielle Ryan Cook, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology & Oncology

Office: MR-6 G523
Address: MR-6 Room G707
345 Crispell Dr
PO Box 801386
Charlottesville, VA 22908
Email: daniellecook@virginia.edu

• BS, Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA
• PhD, Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
• Postdoc, Immunotherapy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• Postdoc, Cancer Genetics, Harvard Medical School/ Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA

Immuno-Oncology, T cell therapy, TCR Discovery, Next generation cell therapy.

Our lab is dedicated to overcoming the significant barriers of cell therapies in solid tumors to create and improve new oncology treatments. We focus on three core areas:

1. TCR Discovery: Leveraging our advanced technology, we screen hundreds of TCRs to find collections of tumor-specific TCRs across various cancer types. We aim to discover and utilize a collection of TCRs for a given cancer indication. We have a novel CRISPR/Cas9 editing strategy to facilitate a polyclonal TCR-T therapy.
2. Antigen Identification: Our unique platform pinpoints the precise peptides targeted by tumor-specific TCRs. This facilitates the thorough safety profiling essential for developing effective off-the-shelf TCR-T products.
3. Next-Generation T Cell Edits: We employ high-throughput genetics consisting of CRISPR (KO/a/i), ORFs, and rational synthetic molecules to screen for improved in vivo functionality of T cells, such as persistence and overcoming exhaustion.

• Moravec Z, Yue Z, Voog R, Cook DR, Kinrot S, Capra B, Raud B, Jiayu O, Xuan J, Wei Teng, Ren L, Hu D, Wang J, Haanen John, Schumacher TN, Chen X, Porter E, Scheper W. “Discovery of tumor-reactive T cell receptors by massively parallel library synthesis and screening” Nat Biotech.
• Martin TD, Patel RS, Cook DR, Choi MY, Patil A, Liang AC, Li MZ, Haigis KM, Elledge SJ. “The adaptive immune system is a major driver of selection for tumor suppressor gene inactivation.” Science. 2021 Sep 17;373(6561):1327-1335.
• Yin Y, Boesteanu AC, Binder ZA, Xu C, Reid RA, Rodriguez JL, Cook DR, Thokala R, Blouch K, McGettigan-Croce B, Zhang L, Konradt C, Cogdill AP, Panjwani MK, Jiang S, Migliorini D, Dahmane N, Posey AD Jr, June CH, Mason NJ, Lin Z, O’Rourke DM, Johnson LA. “Checkpoint Blockade Reverses Anergy in IL-13Rα2 Humanized scFv-Based CAR T Cells to Treat Murine and Canine Gliomas.” Mol Ther Oncolytics. 2018 Aug 28;11:20-38.