Pittsburgh Surgical Outcomes Research Center
Transforming the conduct of clinical research

Udai S Kammula, MD

  • Associate Professor , Director, Solid Tumor Cell Therapy Program, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

Education & Training

  • BA, Johns Hopkins University
  • MD, University of Maryland School of Medicine
  • General Surgery Residency, University of Chicago Hospitals
  • Clinical and Research Fellowship in Surgical Oncology and Immunotherapy, Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
  • Surgical Oncology Fellowship, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Representative Publications

Research Interest Summary

Cancer immunotherapy, Adoptive T cell transfer, Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, Gene therapy

Research Interests

Do you currently have a research resident in your lab?

Shravan Leonard-Murali, PGY4 surgical resident from Henry Ford Medical Center.

Shravan is utilizing advanced computational biology strategies to identify the factors that lead to T cell recognition of human tumors. This project combines basic tumor immunology laboratory experimentation, bioinformatic analyses, and analyses of ongoing clinical immunotherapy trials.

Have you previously mentored residents in research projects?

As a senior investigator at the Surgery Branch and PI at the University of Pittsburgh I have mentored surgical residents in my lab every year since 2004.

Project description:  Basic/Translational Research

As Director of the Solid Tumor Cell Therapy Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center (UPMC), I oversee both clinical and research studies aimed at developing effective T cell based immunotherapies for advanced cancer. We employ an integrated translational approach based upon preclinical in vitro experimentation, in vivo murine models, and informative human clinical trials. The analysis of clinical results feeds further basic experimentation in an iterative process aimed at elucidating important immunologic principles for the successful treatment of human cancers.

Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh, I was a principal investigator in the intramural program of the NIH (Surgery Branch) between 2004 and 2017. During this time, I was directly involved in the development, translation, and analysis of both clinical and basic research studies in tumor immunology and tumor immunotherapy. I have extensive clinical experience with immune therapies including experimental vaccines, cytokine therapy, checkpoint blockade, gene therapy, and cell based therapies for advanced cancer. My research group at the NIH was the first to utilize tumor infiltrating lymphocyte therapy (TIL) for the treatment of metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and lethal cancer with no effective systemic therapies. As the principal investigator of this effort, I directed the critical preclinical studies and the conduct of the first in-human TIL clinical trial in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. These translational studies revealed that adoptive transfer of TIL could mediate durable and complete cancer regression in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma and were reported in Lancet Oncology in 2017.

Our current projects in the Solid Tumor Cell Therapy Program at UPMC are aimed at improving the frequency, completeness, and durability of clinical responses with T cell therapies in a variety of human cancers. Surgical residents have opportunities to pursue projects ranging from basic tumor immunology bench research, computational biology approaches to improve the understanding of tumor biology, or development of novel cellular immunotherapy and gene therapy clinical trials.

Video Chapter 2. Immune Therapy Using Adoptive Cell Transfer