{"id":29425,"date":"2023-07-17T14:26:01","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T18:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cancerresearch.org\/?post_type=cri_scientists&#038;p=29425"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:36:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T20:36:47","slug":"alberto-ciccia-phd","status":"publish","type":"cri_scientists","link":"https:\/\/www.cancerresearch.org\/es\/cri-funded-scientists\/alberto-ciccia-phd","title":{"rendered":"Alberto Ciccia, PhD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dr. Alberto Ciccia is investigating how to take advantage of tumor genome instability, which arises due to mutations in DNA repair genes, to improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients.<br><br>Cancer immunotherapies have resulted in robust and durable responses in numerous cancer types. Nevertheless, since tumors can become resistant to immunotherapy via several mechanisms, only a fraction of current patients gain the full benefit of these treatments. Recent studies have shown that genome instability in cancer cells can enhance immune responses against tumors by inducing cancer-intrinsic innate immunity via DNA damage response (DDR) signaling pathways; however, it\u2019s unknown which specific DDR factors regulate innate immune responses and boost anti-tumor immunity. Furthermore, in DDR genes, there are more than 50,000 known single nucleotide variants (SNVs)\u2014which have a single mutated letter in their DNA code\u2014but their impact on patient responses to immunotherapy remains undetermined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, Dr. Ciccia\u2019s goal is to 1) identify DDR factors that modulate how well the immune system recognizes tumors using newly developed genetic screens that monitor markers of innate immune signaling and checkpoint immunotherapy response; and 2) determine how cancer-associated SNVs found in DDR genes affect immunotherapy responses using an innovative editing and screening platform to generate SNVs within cells. Overall, Dr. Ciccia aims to uncover novel factors that could be targeted to improve immune-based cancer treatments and provide unprecedented insights into the impact of SNVs on anti-tumor immunity, thus paving the way for the development of SNV-targeted cancer therapies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Projects and Grants<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong><strong>High-throughput functional interrogation of the impact of DNA repair gene mutations on anti-tumor immunity<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Columbia University | Breast cancer, Colorectal cancer, Prostate cancer, Ovarian cancer | 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Alberto Ciccia is investigating how to take advantage of tumor genome instability, which arises due to mutations in DNA repair genes, to improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients. Cancer immunotherapies have resulted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":29412,"template":"","tax_cancer_type":[365,362,352,350],"tax_grant_type":[482],"tax_award_year":[480],"tax_institutions":[623],"tax_location_states":[494],"class_list":["post-29425","cri_scientists","type-cri_scientists","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"scientist_subhead":"CRI Lloyd J. Old STAR","quote":"Thanks to the generous funding provided by the CRI Lloyd J Old STAR Program, we can now investigate how mutations in DNA repair genes influence the response of cancer cells to immunotherapy.","scientist_last_name":"Ciccia","show_on_landing":false,"scientist_publish_until":"20280630"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Alberto Ciccia, PhD - Cancer Research Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dr. Alberto Ciccia is investigating how to take advantage of tumor genome instability, which arises due to mutations in DNA repair genes, to improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cancerresearch.org\/cri-funded-scientists\/alberto-ciccia-phd\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_ES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alberto Ciccia, PhD - 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