Meet the Team
Esma Yolcu, MSc, PhD
Professor and Division Director of Pediatric Research, Department of Pediatrics; NextGen Precision Health Investigator, University of Missouri School of Medicine
Bio
Dr. Yolcu’s research focuses on developing innovative strategies to induce immune tolerance and modulate immune responses in transplantation, autoimmunity, and cancer.
She co-invented ProtEx™, a versatile platform technology for displaying or delivering protein-based immunomodulatory biologics. This has enabled novel approaches to promote graft acceptance without chronic immunosuppression, prevent type 1 diabetes, and enhance cancer immunoprevention and immunotherapy. Her research advances next-generation immunotherapies for precision medicine by bridging fundamental immunology to clinical translation. Her research is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Breakthrough T1D Foundation (formerly known as JDRF), and the Department of Defense (DoD). Dr. Yolcu has published extensively in the fields of immunotherapy and tolerance induction and is dedicated to mentoring future leaders in translational immunology.
Kristin Sohl, MD
Associate Professor
Bio
Dr. Sohl is a pediatrician with extensive experience in medical diagnosis, evaluation and treatment of children with a concern of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She is an expert in quality and process improvement for comprehensive autism diagnostic and longitudinal services.
She is the site principal investigator for the Autism Intervention Research for Physical Health/Autism Treatment Network (AIRP/ATN) and the founder of ECHO Autism, an innovative framework to increase community capacity to care for children with autism and other developmental/behavioral concerns. Her team has established partnerships with health care entities in more than 15 states and five countries. Her research focus is system change to improve health care and services for individuals with autism through understanding their medical conditions.
Jorge Gomez-Gutierrez, PhD
Associate Professor
Bio
The Gomez-Gutierrez Laboratory is primarily interested in microbial-based cancer therapy. We focus on investigating how virus- and bacteria-based therapies can be used to stop tumorigenesis and induce oncolysis and/or immune responses in cancers when conventional therapy is inadequate. Two microorganisms are being studied: the first is a conditionally replicating adenovirus (CRAd) also known as oncolytic adenovirus (OAd); the second is the lactic acid bacteria Lactococcus lactis (L. lactis), which is generally regarded as a safe (GRAS) organism and is used in dairy industry to make cheese and yogurt. The former study was funded with an NIH/NCI exploratory/developmental grant R21CA210202 and currently supported by Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
