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Sean Yamada-Hunter, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering

Languages

English

Education

Fellowship

Cancer Immunotherapy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 2025

Degrees

PhD, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 2020
BS, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 2013

Contact Information

Scientific Interests

Dr. Yamada-Hunter's lab specializes in the application of protein engineering and synthetic biology to overcome challenges facing immune cell cancer therapy. He has over ten years of translational research experience designing protein, T cell, and combination cancer therapies. His research group seeks to design therapies that apply pressure on tumors through multiple axes, curtailing resistance mechanisms. A major direction is to build upon recent findings from my postdoctoral work by dissecting mechanistic interactions between T cells and macrophages in the tumor microenvironment while designing next generation T cell – macrophage combination therapies for solid tumors.

Highlighted Publications

Yamada-Hunter SA, Theruvath J, McIntosh BJ, Freitas KA, Lin F, Radosevich MT, Leruste A, Dhingra S, Martinez-Velez N, Xu P, Huang J, Delaidelli A, Desai MH, Good Z, Polak R, May A, Labanieh L, Bjelajac J, Murty T, Ehlinger Z, Mount CW, Chen Y, Heitzeneder S, Marjon KD, Banuelos A, Khan O, Wasserman SL, Spiegel JY, Fernandez-Pol S, Kuo CJ, Sorensen PH, Monje M, Majzner RG, Weissman IL, Sahaf B, Sotillo E, Cochran JR, Mackall CL. Engineered CD47 protects T cells for enhanced antitumour immunity. Nature. 2024 Jun;630(8016):457 465. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024- 07443-8. Epub 2024 May 15. PubMed PMID: 38750365; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11168929.

Yang JL, Yamada-Hunter SA, Labanieh L, Sotillo E, Cheah JS, Roberts DS, Mackall CL, Bertozzi CR, Ting AY. Directed evolution of genetically encoded LYTACs for cell-mediated delivery. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Mar 26;121(13):e2320053121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2320053121. Epub 2024 Mar 22. PubMed PMID: 38513100; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10990137.

Labanieh L, Majzner RG, Klysz D, Sotillo E, Fisher CJ, Vilches-Moure JG, Pacheco KZB, Malipatlolla M, Xu P, Hui JH, Murty T, Theruvath J, Mehta N, Yamada-Hunter SA, Weber EW, Heitzeneder S, Parker KR, Satpathy AT, Chang HY, Lin MZ, Cochran JR, Mackall CL. Enhanced safety and efficacy of protease-regulated CAR-T cell receptors. Cell. 2022 May 12;185(10):1745-1763.e22. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.03.041. Epub 2022 Apr 27. PubMed PMID: 35483375; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9467936.