Research Summary

I am a physician-scientist focused on developing novel immunotherapies with enhanced activity and reduced toxicity, for patients with solid cancers.

Clinically, I see patients in the Cancer Immunotherapy Program where I lead numerous early phase trials, with a particular focus on adoptive cell therapies for solid tumors (CAR-T and TCR). I have also led trials of intratumoral immunotherapy and next-generation cytokine therapy.

In the laboratory, I run an extramurally funded translational program focused on the role of cytotoxic immune effectors in anti-tumor responses as well as immune-related adverse events (IRAEs) after immunotherapy. This work spans high-resolution multiomic interrogation and functional validation using patient samples, as well as murine model systems.

Research Funding

  • March 1, 2019 - February 29, 2024 - Identification of circulating and tissue-specific autoimmune responses in checkpoint inhibitor-induced immune-related adverse events , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: K08AI139375

Education

Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, AB, 06/2000, Biochemical Sciences
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, MD, 06/2011, Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, PhD, 06/2011, Molecular and Cellular Physiology
University of California, San Francisco, CA, Residency, 06/2014, Internal Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, CA, Fellowship, 06/2017, Hematology/Oncology

Honors & Awards

  • 9/2001-6/2011
    Medical Scientist Training Program awardee
  • 3/2010
    Keystone Symposia Travel Scholarship
  • 6/2015
    UCSF Hematology/Oncology Clinical Fellow Award (selected by Medicine housestaff for patient care, teaching, professionalism)
  • 1/2016
    UCSF Hematology/Oncology 2016 Award for Excellence in Fellowship Research
  • 4/2016
    Merit Award, Conquer Cancer Foundation of American Society of Clinical Oncology
  • 6/2017
    Young Investigator Award, Conquer Cancer Foundation of American Society of Clinical Oncology
  • 5/2018
    Young Investigator Award, Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network
  • 7/2018
    Young Investigator Award, Prostate Cancer Foundation

Selected Publications

  1. Kwek SS, Yang H, Li T, Ilano A, Chow ED, Zhang L, Chang H, Luong D, Lea A, Clark M, Starzinski A, Shi Y, McCarthy E, Porten S, Meng MV, Ye CJ, Fong L, Oh DY. Identification and regulation of circulating tumor TCR-matched cytotoxic CD4+ lymphocytes by KLRG1 in bladder cancer. JCI Insight. 2025 Apr 29.  View on PubMed
  2. David Yoonsuk Oh, Deepak Kilari, Christopher Darr, Kevin Kayvan Zarrabi, Jessica E. Hawley, Russell Kent Pachynski, Scott T. Tagawa, Yuanquan Yang, Simon Buetikofer, Qing Xia, Gunhild Von Amsberg. A phase 1b, open-label, multicenter study of xaluritamig in patients with newly diagnosed localized intermediate- or high-risk prostate cancer in the neoadjuvant setting. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2025 Feb 10; 43(5_suppl).  View on PubMed
  3. Mennillo E, Lotstein ML, Lee G, Johri V, Ekstrand C, Tsui J, Hou J, Leet DE, He JY, Mahadevan U, Eckalbar W, Oh DY, Fragiadakis GK, Kattah MG, Combes AJ. Single-cell spatial transcriptomics of fixed, paraffin-embedded biopsies reveals colitis-associated cell networks. bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 11.  View on PubMed
  4. Mei R, Pepe E, Oh DY, Tsai KK, Chugh R, Kattah MG. Symptomatic and Sonographic Improvement of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Enterocolitis With Risankizumab. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2025 Apr 10; 31(4):1182-1183.  View on PubMed
  5. Montauti E, Oh DY, Fong L. CD4+ T cells in antitumor immunity. Trends Cancer. 2024 Oct; 10(10):969-985.  View on PubMed
  6. Tsimberidou AM, Alayli FA, Okrah K, Drakaki A, Khalil DN, Kummar S, Khan SA, Hodi FS, Oh DY, Cabanski CR, Gautam S, Meier SL, Amouzgar M, Pfeiffer SM, Kageyama R, Yang E, Spasic M, Tetzlaff MT, Foo WC, Hollmann TJ, Li Y, Adamow M, Wong P, Moore JS, Velichko S, Chen RO, Kumar D, Bucktrout S, Ibrahim R, Dugan U, Salvador L, Hubbard-Lucey VM, O'Donnell-Tormey J, Santulli-Marotto S, Butterfield LH, Da Silva DM, Fairchild J, LaVallee TM, Padrón LJ, Sharma P. Immunologic signatures of response and resistance to nivolumab with ipilimumab in advanced metastatic cancer. J Exp Med. 2024 Oct 07; 221(10).  View on PubMed
  7. He JY, Kim YJ, Mennillo E, Rusu I, Bain J, Rao AA, Andersen C, Law K, Yang H, Tsui J, Shen A, Davidson B, Kushnoor D, Shi Y, Fan F, Cheung A, Zhang L, Fong L, Combes AJ, Pisco AO, Kattah MG, Oh DY. Dysregulation of CD4+ and CD8+ resident memory T, myeloid, and stromal cells in steroid-experienced, checkpoint inhibitor colitis. J Immunother Cancer. 2024 Apr 19; 12(4).  View on PubMed
  8. Zenghua Fan, David Y. Oh, Anthony Wong, Katsuto Shinohara, Hao Nguyen, Caleb Hwang, Hewitt Chang, Alec Starzinski, Tony Li, Christopher De Leon, Marissa Gin, Eliezer Van Allen, Li Zhang, Rahaul R. Aggarwal, Terence W. Friedlander, Eric J. Small, Felix Y. Feng, Lawrence Fong. Abstract 4988: Responders to combination radiation and PD-1 blockade demonstrate reduced myeloid immunosuppression and enhanced interferon signaling in oligometastatic prostate cancer patients. Cancer Research. 2024 Mar 22; 84(6_Supplement):4988-4988.  View on PubMed
  9. Mennillo E, Kim YJ, Lee G, Rusu I, Patel RK, Dorman LC, Flynn E, Li S, Bain JL, Andersen C, Rao A, Tamaki S, Tsui J, Shen A, Lotstein ML, Rahim M, Naser M, Bernard-Vazquez F, Eckalbar W, Cho SJ, Beck K, El-Nachef N, Lewin S, Selvig DR, Terdiman JP, Mahadevan U, Oh DY, Fragiadakis GK, Pisco A, Combes AJ, Kattah MG. Single-cell and spatial multi-omics highlight effects of anti-integrin therapy across cellular compartments in ulcerative colitis. Nat Commun. 2024 Feb 19; 15(1):1493.  View on PubMed
  10. Vadim S Koshkin, Tanya Jindal, Jun Yan He, Li Zhang, Celine N. Galang, Divya Natesan, Vipul Kumar, Xiaolin Zhu, Jonathan Chou, Rahul Raj Aggarwal, Eric J. Small, Maxwell Meng, Sima P. Porten, David Yoonsuk Oh, Lawrence Fong, Terence W. Friedlander. Efficacy outcomes and biomarker analysis from phase II trial of escalating doses of neoadjuvant atezolizumab in patients with muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma ineligible for cisplatin-based chemotherapy. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2024 Feb 1; 42(4_suppl):602-602.  View on PubMed
  11. Mennillo E, Kim YJ, Lee G, Rusu I, Patel RK, Dorman LC, Flynn E, Li S, Bain JL, Andersen C, Rao A, Tamaki S, Tsui J, Shen A, Lotstein ML, Rahim M, Naser M, Bernard-Vazquez F, Eckalbar W, Cho SJ, Beck K, El-Nachef N, Lewin S, Selvig DR, Terdiman JP, Mahadevan U, Oh DY, Fragiadakis GK, Pisco A, Combes AJ, Kattah MG. Single-cell and spatial multi-omics highlight effects of anti-integrin therapy across cellular compartments in ulcerative colitis. bioRxiv. 2024 Jan 03.  View on PubMed
  12. Emperumal CP, Villa A, Hwang C, Oh D, Fong L, Aggarwal R, Keenan BP. Oral Toxicities of PSMA-Targeted Immunotherapies for The Management of Prostate Cancer. Clin Genitourin Cancer. 2024 04; 22(2):380-384.  View on PubMed
  13. Aggarwal R, Starzinski S, de Kouchkovsky I, Koshkin V, Bose R, Chou J, Desai A, Kwon D, Kaushal S, Trihy L, Rastogi M, Ippisch R, Aslam M, Friedlander T, Feng F, Oh D, Cheung A, Small E, Evans M, Fong L, Hope TA. Single-dose 177Lu-PSMA-617 followed by maintenance pembrolizumab in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: an open-label, dose-expansion, phase 1 trial. Lancet Oncol. 2023 11; 24(11):1266-1276.  View on PubMed
  14. Hassan R, Butler M, O'Cearbhaill RE, Oh DY, Johnson M, Zikaras K, Smalley M, Ross M, Tanyi JL, Ghafoor A, Shah NN, Saboury B, Cao L, Quintás-Cardama A, Hong D. Mesothelin-targeting T cell receptor fusion construct cell therapy in refractory solid tumors: phase 1/2 trial interim results. Nat Med. 2023 08; 29(8):2099-2109.  View on PubMed
  15. Raffit Hassan, Marcus O. Butler, David Yoonsuk Oh, Roisin Eilish O'Cearbhaill, Lauren MacMullen, Erin Jeter, Udayan Guha, Viera P. Muzithras, Kevin Zikaras, Melissa Lynne Johnson, Janos Laszlo Tanyi, Azam Ghafoor, Robert Tighe, Munisha Smalley, Alfonso Quintas-Cardama, David S. Hong. Phase 1 trial of gavocabtagene autoleucel (gavo-cel, TC-210) in patients (pts) with treatment refractory mesothelioma and other mesothelin-expressing solid tumors. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2023 Jun 1; 41(16_suppl):8537-8537.  View on PubMed
  16. Foy SP, Jacoby K, Bota DA, Hunter T, Pan Z, Stawiski E, Ma Y, Lu W, Peng S, Wang CL, Yuen B, Dalmas O, Heeringa K, Sennino B, Conroy A, Bethune MT, Mende I, White W, Kukreja M, Gunturu S, Humphrey E, Hussaini A, An D, Litterman AJ, Quach BB, Ng AHC, Lu Y, Smith C, Campbell KM, Anaya D, Skrdlant L, Huang EY, Mendoza V, Mathur J, Dengler L, Purandare B, Moot R, Yi MC, Funke R, Sibley A, Stallings-Schmitt T, Oh DY, Chmielowski B, Abedi M, Yuan Y, Sosman JA, Lee SM, Schoenfeld AJ, Baltimore D, Heath JR, Franzusoff A, Ribas A, Rao AV, Mandl SJ. Non-viral precision T cell receptor replacement for personalized cell therapy. Nature. 2023 03; 615(7953):687-696.  View on PubMed
  17. Kwon H, Schafer JM, Song NJ, Kaneko S, Li A, Xiao T, Ma A, Allen C, Das K, Zhou L, Riesenberg B, Chang Y, Weltge P, Velegraki M, Oh DY, Fong L, Ma Q, Sundi D, Chung D, Li X, Li Z. Androgen conspires with the CD8+ T cell exhaustion program and contributes to sex bias in cancer. Sci Immunol. 2022 07; 7(73):eabq2630.  View on PubMed
  18. Susan F. Slovin, Tanya B. Dorff, Gerald Steven Falchook, Xiao X. Wei, Xin Gao, Rana R. McKay, David Yoonsuk Oh, Andreas Georg Wibmer, Matthew A. Spear, Joanne McCaigue, Devon J. Shedlock, Manjima Dhar, Julia Coronella, Christopher E. Martin, Majid Ghodussi, Ann Murphy, Eric M. Ostertag. Phase 1 study of P-PSMA-101 CAR-T cells in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2022 Feb 20; 40(6_suppl):98-98.  View on PubMed
  19. Wei J, Oh DY, Evans MJ. Preparation of Radiolabeled Antibodies for Nuclear Medicine Applications in Immuno-Oncology. Methods Mol Biol. 2022; 2393:829-839.  View on PubMed
  20. Oh DY, Fong L. Cytotoxic CD4+ T cells in cancer: Expanding the immune effector toolbox. Immunity. 2021 12 14; 54(12):2701-2711.  View on PubMed

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