Christopher S. Nabel, MD, PhD

Research Summary

Immunotherapies have transformed the treatment of many cancers through mobilizing the immune system against tumors. Unfortunately, only a fraction of patients receive benefit. An emerging hallmark of immunotherapy resistance is the accumulation of adenosine nucleotides in the tumor microenvironment, which disrupts the function of T cells and the ability of the immune system to orchestrate anti-tumor responses.

Research in the Nabel laboratory is focused at the intersection of cancer metabolism and immunology with the larger goal of understanding how cancer rewires metabolism within tumors to promote resistance to immunotherapy.

Using cutting-edge techniques in metabolism, we are studying the factors that control adenosine generation within tumors to define the best ways to remove this waste product and restore the immune system’s ability to fight back against cancer cells. This work addresses unanswered questions about novel drugs that are being studied in clinical trials for non-small cell lung cancer.

Biography

Christopher Nabel is a medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Charles W. (1955) and Jennifer C. Johnson Clinical Investigator at MIT's Koch Institute. He received his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by clinical training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and medical oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. He joined Matthew Vander Heiden's Laboratory for postdoctoral studies focused on nucleotide metabolism in cancer. He is board certified in medical oncology, with a clinical practice focused on lung cancer and thymic epithelial tumors.

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