Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Naema Nayyar is a PhD candidate at UMass Medical School dedicated to translational cancer research. Her thesis research is focused on advancing immunotherapeutics for brain metastatic cancers. To pursue this goal, she works in the laboratories of Mike Brehm at UMass, with expertise in immuno-oncology and humanized mouse models, and Priscilla Brastianos at Massachusetts General Hospital, with a large repository of brain metastatic tumor samples and expertise in cancer genomics.
Prior to pursuing a PhD in biomedical sciences, Naema spent a decade conducting academic research. Her undergraduate training was in bioinformatics, which paved the way for neuroscience research in the Tonegawa Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying neuronal connections involved in learning and memory. She then trained with Dr. Dietrich in the Scadden Lab where she worked towards understanding and alleviating neurotoxicities associated with cancer therapies.
In the Brastianos Lab, research characterizing genomic drivers of brain metastatic tumors has led to multiple clinical trials. Naema hopes to continue discovering targets and optimizing therapeutic paradigms for patients with metastatic cancer, all while championing collaborations and team science.
