Jorge Gomez-Gutierrez, PhD, BSc

Jorge Gomez-Gutierrez, PhD, is an associate professor of pediatrics, a cancer researcher and a NextGen Precision Health investigator at the University of Missouri. The major focus of Dr. Gomez's research program for more than a decade 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 normal cells becoming cancerous (tumorigenesis) and induce the breakdown of tumor cells (oncolysis) and/or immune responses in cancers when conventional therapy is inadequate.

Dr. Gomez's lab is studying two microorganisms: The first is an oncolytic adenovirus (OAd), and the second is the probiotic bacterium Lactococcus lactis (L. lactis).

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 a National Cancer Institute R21 award.

L. lactis 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 National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering award R01EB033919.