Alena Gros
agros@vhio.net
Current position
- Group Leader of VHIO´s Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Group
Academic Qualifications
- 2016-Ongoing: Miguel Servet I Investigator
- 2014-2016: Research Fellow at the Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (PI: Steven A. Rosenberg M.D., Ph.D.), USA
- 2009-2014: Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (PI: Steven A. Rosenberg M.D., Ph.D.), USA
- 2009: PhD in Genetics at the University of Barcelona, Spain
- 2003-2009: Undergraduate Student at the Catalan Institute of Oncology, Duran i Reynals Hospital, Barcelona, Spain (PI: Ramon Alemany)
- 2003-Degree in Biological Sciences by the University of Barcelona
Areas of Research
- Mechanisms influencing response, resistance and toxicity of cancer immunotherapies
- Naturally occurring T cell responses to cancer
- Development of novel personalized T cell therapies for cancer treatment
Prizes and Scholarships
- Cancer Research Training Award Fellowship recipient (2009-2014)
- National Cancer Institute Fellows Award for Research Excellence 2015 recipient
- CCR Federal Technology Transfer Award 2015
- Miguel Servet I Fellowship Award, Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo
Projects
- Grantor: Miguel Servet (Type 1).
Title: Characterization of neoantigen-specific T cells and identification of predictive biomarkers of response in patients with MSI and MSI-like CRC treated with anti-PDL1. - Grantor: Instituto de Salud Carlos III.
Title: Identificación de antígenos tumorales no canónicos y análisis de su relevancia en la inmunoterapia del cáncer. - Grantor: Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer – AECC (Lab AECC).
Title: Identification of biomarkers of response to cancer immunotherapy in liquid biopsies. - Grantor: Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer – AECC (Ideas Semilla).
Title: Identification of the personalized repertoire of immunogenic tumor rejection epitopes. - Grantor: EMD Serono (Grant for Oncology Innovation).
Title: Personalized non-invasive T-cell therapies targeting the mutanome - Grantor: Fundación Fero (Beca Fero)
Title: Non-invasive personalized T-cell therapies targeting recurrent hot spot driver mutations in cancer. - Grantor: Fundación BBVA.
Alena Gros is a member of our VHIO-BBVA Foundation’s Immunotherapy & Immunology Program (CAIMI). - Title: Personalized T-cell therapies targeting neoantigens with enhanced efficacy and broad applicability (PersACT)
Reference: CNS2023-145343
Funding Entity: Agencia Estatal de Investigación. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Period of Execution: 1/04/2024-31/03/2026
PI: Alena Gros
Ayuda cofinanciada por la Unión Europea Next Generation EU – Plan de Recuperación Transformación y Resilencia
Most relevant scientific publications
- Lozano-Rabella M, Garcia-Garijo A, Palomero J, Yuste-Estevanez A, Erhard F, Farriol-Duran R, Martín-Liberal J, Ochoa-de-Olza M, Matos I, Gartner JJ, Ghosh M, Canals F, Vidal A, Piulats JM, Matías-Guiu X, Brana I, Muñoz-Couselo E, Garralda E, Schlosser A, Gros A. Exploring the Immunogenicity of Noncanonical HLA-I Tumor Ligands Identified through Proteogenomics. Clin Cancer Res. 2023 Jun 13;29(12):2250-2265.
- Marin I, Boix O, Garcia-Garijo A, Sirois I, Caballe A, Zarzuela E, Ruano I, Attolini CS, Prats N, López-Domínguez JA, Kovatcheva M, Garralda E, Muñoz J, Caron E, Abad M, Gros A, Pietrocola F, Serrano M. Cellular Senescence Is Immunogenic and Promotes Antitumor Immunity. Cancer Discov. 2023 Feb 6;13(2):410-431.
- Puig-Saus C, Sennino B, Peng S, Wang CL, Pan Z, Yuen B, Purandare B, An D, Quach BB, Nguyen D, Xia H, Jilani S, Shao K, McHugh C, Greer J, Peabody P, Nayak S, Hoover J, Said S, Jacoby K, Dalmas O, Foy SP, Conroy A, Yi MC, Shieh C, Lu W, Heeringa K, Ma Y, Chizari S, Pilling MJ, Ting M, Tunuguntla R, Sandoval S, Moot R, Hunter T, Zhao S, Saco JD, Perez-Garcilazo I, Medina E, Vega-Crespo A, Baselga-Carretero I, Abril-Rodriguez G, Cherry G, Wong DJ, Hundal J, Chmielowski B, Speiser DE, Bethune MT, Bao XR, Gros A, Griffith OL, Griffith M, Heath JR, Franzusoff A, Mandl SJ, Ribas A. Neoantigen-targeted CD8+ T cell responses with PD-1 blockade therapy. Nature. 2023 Mar;615(7953):697-704.
- García-Mulero S, Fornelino R, Punta M, Lise S, Varela M, Del Carpio LP, Moreno R, Costa-García M, Rieder D, Trajanoski Z, Gros A, Alemany R, Piulats JM, Sanz-Pamplona R. Driver mutations in GNAQ and GNA11 genes as potential targets for precision immunotherapy in uveal melanoma patients. Oncoimmunology. 2023 Oct 24;12(1):2261278.
- Marin I, Boix O, Garcia-Garijo A, Sirois I, Caballe A, Zarzuela E, Ruano I, Stephan-Otto Attolini C, Prats N, Lopez-Dominguez JA, Kovatcheva M, Garralda E, Munoz J, Caron E, Abad M, Gros A, Pietrocola F, Serrano M. Cellular senescence is immunogenic and promotes anti-tumor immunity. Cancer Discov. Epub 2022 Oct 27.
- Palomero J, Panisello C, Lozano-Rabella M, Tirtakasuma R, Díaz-Gómez J, Grases D, Pasamar H, Arregui L, Dorca Duch E, Guerra Fernández E, Vivancos A, de Andrea CE, Melero I, Ponce J, Vidal A, Piulats JM, Matias-Guiu X, Gros A. Biomarkers of tumor-reactive CD4+ and CD8+ TILs associate with improved prognosis in endometrial cancer. J Immunother Cancer. 2022 Dec;10(12):e005443. doi: 10.1136/jitc-2022-005443. PMID: 36581331; PMCID: PMC9806064.
- Levy PL, Gros A. Fast track to personalized TCR T cell therapies. Cancer Cell. 2022 May 9;40(5):447-449.
- Lozano-Rabella M, Gros A. TCR Repertoire Changes during TIL Expansion: Clonal Selection or Drifting? Clin Cancer Res. 2020 Aug 15;26(16):4177-4179.
- Gros A, Tran E, Parkhurst MR, Ilyas S, Pasetto A, Groh EM, Robbins PF, Yossef R, Garcia-Garijo A, Fajardo CA, Prickett TD, Jia L, Gartner JJ, Ray S, Ngo L, Wunderllich JR, Yang JC, Rosenberg SA. Recognition of human gastrointestinal cancer neoantigens by circulating PD-1+ lymphocytes. J Clin Invest. 2019 Nov 1;129(11):4992-5004.
- Garcia-Garijo A, Fajardo CA, Gros A. Determinants for Neoantigen Identification. Front Immunol. 2019 Jun 24;10:1392.
- R. Eil, S.K. Vodnala, D. Clever, C.A. Klebanoff, M.Sukumar, J.H. Pan, D.C. Palmer, A. Gros, T.N. Yamamoto, S.J. Patel, G.C. Guittard, Z. Yu, V. Carbonaro, K. Okkenhaug, D.S. Schrump, W.M. Linehan, R. Roychoudhuri, N.P. Restifo. Ionic immune suppression within the tumour microenvironment limits T cell effector function, Nature, 14 (2016) 539-543.
- A. Pasetto, A. Gros, P.F. Robbins, D.C. Deniger, R.D. Prickett, R. Matus-Nicodemos, D.C. Douek, B. Howie, H. Robins, M.R. Parkhurst, J. Gartner, K. Trebska-McGowan, J.S. Crystal, S.A. Rosenberg. Tumor- and Neoantigen-reactive T-cell receptors can be identified based on their frequency in fresh tumor.Cancer Immunol 2 (2016) 734-743.
- A. Gros, M.R. Parkhurst, E. Tran, A. Pasetto, P.F. Robbins, S. Ilyas, T.D. Prickett, J.J. Gartner, J.S. Crystal, I.M. Roberts, K. Trebska-McGowan, J.R. Wunderlich, J.C. Yang, S.A. Rosenberg, Prospective identification of neoantigen-specific lymphocytes in the peripheral blood of melanoma patients, Nat Med, 22 (2016) 433-438.
- E. Tran, M. Ahmadzadeh, Y.C. Lu, A. Gros, S. Turcotte, P.F. Robbins, J.J. Gartner, Z. Zheng, Y.F. Li, S. Ray, J.R. Wunderlich, R.P. Somerville, S.A. Rosenberg, Immunogenicity of somatic mutations in human gastrointestinal cancers, Science, 350 (2015) 1387-1390
- S. Turcotte, A. Gros, E. Tran, C.C. Lee, J.R. Wunderlich, P.F. Robbins, S.A. Rosenberg, Tumor-Reactive CD8+ T Cells in Metastatic Gastrointestinal Cancer Refractory to Chemotherapy, Clin Cancer Res, 20 (2014) 331-343.
- E. Tran, S. Turcotte, A. Gros, P.F. Robbins, Y.C. Lu, M.E. Dudley, J.R. Wunderlich, R.P. Somerville, K. Hogan, C.S. Hinrichs, M.R. Parkhurst, J.C. Yang, S.A.
- Rosenberg, Cancer immunotherapy based on mutation-specific CD4+ T cells in a patient with epithelial cancer, Science, 344 (2014) 641-645.
- A. Gros, P.F. Robbins, X. Yao, Y.F. Li, S. Turcotte, E. Tran, J.R. Wunderlich, A. Mixon, S. Farid, M.E. Dudley, K. Hanada, J.R. Almeida, S. Darko, D.C. Douek, J.C. Yang, S.A. Rosenberg, PD-1 identifies the patient-specific CD8(+) tumor-reactive repertoire infiltrating human tumors, J Clin Invest, 124 (2014) 2246-2259.
