Columbia Scientists Named Chan Zuckerberg Investigators

Two teams at VP&S received funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York (CZ Biohub NY) to develop nextgeneration, personalized cell therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases. Aimee Payne, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Dermatology, leads a project to develop cell therapies that eliminate harmful cells in patients with pemphigus, myasthenia gravis, and other autoimmune diseases. Catherine Spina, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiation oncology, and Jeremy Worley, PhD, assistant professor of systems biology, lead a team that is working to adapt chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy—which has shown remarkable success in treating blood cancers—for the treatment of solid tumors.

The researchers are among nine new investigators to receive funding from the Investigator Program at CZ Biohub NY, which launched in 2023 with a mission to harness and bioengineer immune cells for the early detection, prevention, and treatment of a broad spectrum of age-related diseases. (See “The Frontier of ‘Living Drugs’” on page 10.)