Spring 2026 Grantee Highlight:
Romanos Sklavenitis Pistofidis

Romanos Sklavenitis Pistofidis, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Translational Sciences, City of Hope

Blood cancers are often treated with therapies that target both malignant and healthy blood cells, leading to significant side effects such as infections and impaired immune function. As a result, there is a critical need for approaches that selectively target cancer cells while sparing normal cells.

Romanos Sklavenitis Pistofidis and his team are developing a novel strategy called the Trojan Horse platform, which uses viral engineering to program blood cancer cells to express cancer-specific markers that can be safely targeted by therapies or used to stimulate anti-cancer immune responses. To enable this approach, the team is investigating how blood cancer cells regulate viral infectivity and susceptibility to genome engineering. Using cutting-edge single-cell multi-omics technologies, they aim to identify mechanisms that make these cancer cells more amenable to viral infection and genetic manipulation. This work will establish the foundation for the Trojan Horse platform while uncovering fundamental insights into blood cancer biology that could inform the development of next-generation immunotherapies, precision genome engineering strategies, and novel antiviral therapies.

Learn more about the Sklavenitis Pistofidis Lab: www.rsplab.org