Associate Professor of Pediatrics, School of Medicine

NextGen Focus Area: Cancer and Immunology

The major focus of Dr. Gomez's research program in the last 12 years has been the development of microbial-based cancer immunotherapies. His laboratory focuses on investigating how virus- and bacteria-based therapies can be used to stop tumorigenesis and induce oncolysis and/or immune responses in cancers when conventional therapy is inadequate. Two microorganisms are being studied: the first is an oncolytic adenovirus (OAd). OAds are novel and promising tools for cancer immunotherapy, as they selectively replicate, spread, and kill cancer cells via viral oncolysis while leaving normal cells intact. Dr. Gomez’s lab developed an OAd “armed” with the novel chimeric co-stimulatory molecule SA-4-1BBL for lung cancer immunotherapy. This study is currently funded by an NCI award (R21CA302730).

The second microorganism is the probiotic bacterium Lactococcus lactis (L. lactis), which is generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the FDA and used in the dairy industry. Genetically modified L. lactis bacteria have been engineered as tools to deliver bioactive proteins to mucosal tissues, exerting both local and systemic effects. Dr. Gomez's lab has genetically engineered L. lactis to express various fluorescent reporter proteins. Furthermore, using the latest technology in small-animal imaging, multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT), his laboratory is investigating the ability of bioengineered L. lactis to serve as a contrast agent for imaging and monitoring inflammation in a colitis mouse model. This investigation was funded by the NIBIB award #R01EB033919.

Precision Health Impact:

• Developing cancer-selective tumoricidal agents to deliver immunotherapeutic molecules. 
• Developing genetically engineered probiotic bacterium as immunomodulatory therapies. 
• Overcoming cancer resistance to immunotherapy and targeted therapies. 

Publications:

• Ramos-Gonzalez MR, Sirpu Natesh N, Rachagani S, Amos-Landgraf J, Shirwan H, Yolcu ES, Gomez-Gutierrez JG, et al. Establishment of Translational Luciferase-Based Cancer Models to Evaluate Antitumoral Therapies. Int J Mol Sci. 2024 Sep 27;25(19):10418.
• Ramos-Gonzalez MR, Tarique M, Batra L, Arguc F, Garza-Morales R, Shirwan H, Yolcu ES, Gomez-Gutierrez JG. Oncolytic Adenovirus Armed with a Novel Agonist of the CD137 Immune Checkpoint Stimulator Suppresses Tumor Growth. Vaccines (Basel). 2024 Mar 21;12(3):340.
• Martinez-Perez AG, Perez-Trujillo JJ, Garza-Morales R, Ramirez-Avila NE, Loera-Arias MJ, Gomez-Gutierrez JG, et al. An Oncolytic Adenovirus Encoding SA-4-1BBL Adjuvant Fused to HPV-16 E7 Antigen Produces a Specific Antitumor Effect in a Cancer Mouse Model. Vaccines (Basel). 2021 Feb 12;9(2):149.
• Lanceta L, O’Neill C, Lypova N, Li X, Rouchka E, Waigel S, et al. Transcriptomic Profiling Identifies Differentially Expressed Genes in Palbociclib-Resistant ER+ MCF7 Breast Cancer Cells. Genes (Basel). 2020 Apr 24;11(4):467.
• Garza-Morales R, Perez-Trujillo JJ, Martinez-Jaramillo E, Saucedo-Cardenas O, Loera-Arias MJ, Garcia-Garcia A, et al. A DNA Vaccine Encoding SA-4-1BBL Fused to HPV-16 E7 Antigen Has Prophylactic and Therapeutic Efficacy in a Cervical Cancer Mouse Model. Cancers (Basel). 2019 Jan 15;11(1):96.

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    NCBI

    PubMed

    ResearchGate

Email: jgdk2@health.missouri.edu
Department website: https://medicine.missouri.edu/faculty/jorge-gomez-gutierrez-phd