Dr. Zappasodi has more than 15 years of experience in tumor immunology and immunotherapy with a focus on T-cell biology and immune-modulation. She is an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and in the Immunology & Microbial Pathogenesis Program of the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences (New York, NY). She is also Lippmann & McCarthy Research Scholar in Breast Cancer at Weill Cornell Medicine and Member Researcher in the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Weill Cornell. She received her Ph.D. degree at the National Cancer Institute of Milan (Milan, Italy), where she studied the mechanisms of action of a novel dendritic-cell-based vaccine for indolent lymphoma patients. She then pursued her postdoctoral research in Drs. Jedd Wolchok and Taha Merghoub’s group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC, New York, USA) to further her expertise and knowledge in tumor immunology and immunotherapy.
Her studies unveiled novel mechanisms of tumor resistance to immunomodulatory antibody-based therapies. Her work led to the discovery of a non-conventional immunosuppressive CD4+ T-cell subset with T-follicular-helper(Tfh)-like features and as a pharmacodynamic biomarker of immune checkpoint blockade activity. In addition, she uncovered novel mechanisms through which GITR agonist and CTLA-4 blocking antibodies hijack the immunosuppressive function of regulatory T cells (Tregs). Specifically, her studies were the first to report that CTLA-4 blockade counteracts Treg immunosuppression by altering the metabolic profile of these cells in a way that is dependent upon the metabolic state of the tumor.
Her research program aims to clarify the mechanisms through which tumors co-opt the microenvironment to grow and escape immune recognition as possible novel biomarkers and targets to improve cancer immunotherapy. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of Tfh responses and tumor metabolic adaptation in tumor immune escape and therapy resistance. While investigating these effects primarily in solid tumors, she aims to apply and study the same principles in tumors originating from the immune system, such as B-cell lymphomas, which can establish intimate interactions with T cells.
Dr. Zappasodi's work has been published in high impact peer reviewed journals and recognized by several awards, including the Presidential Award of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award, the IBM-Bio4Dreams Award of the Italian Scientists & Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF), and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Women in Cancer Research (WICR) Scholar Award. She was the recipient of a Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Scholar Award and Bridge Fellow Award during her post-doctoral training at MSKCC and in the transition toward establishing her lab at Weill Cornell Medicine.