Giedre Krenciute, PhD

Assistant Member, St. Jude Faculty

Departments

Education

PhD - Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
BS - Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Research Interests

The major goal of my research program is to develop CAR-modified T cells as an effective and safe therapy for childhood brain tumors that can then be readily translated into the clinic.

Current projects:

Generating and optimizing novel and safe CAR T cell-based therapies to target pediatric brain tumors.
Enhancing CAR T persistence and efficacy using different genetic manipulations.
Understanding tumor escape mechanism post CAR T cell treatment.
Understanding CAR T cell functional memory programs that control their long-term effector function.
Defining CAR T cell and brain tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) interactions using immune competent brain tumor models.

Krenciute Research Lab

Contact Information

Giedre Krenciute, PhD Bone Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy MS 310, Room I4104 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 262 Danny Thomas Place Memphis, TN 38105-3678

Email: giedre.krenciute@stjude.org
Phone: (901) 595-2188
Fax: (901) 595-3966

St. Jude Faculty List

News Releases

Selected Publications

Haydar D, Houke H, Chiang J, Yi Z, Odé Z, Caldwell K, Zhu X, Mercer KS, Stripay JL, Shaw TI, Vogel P, DeRenzo C, Baker SJ, Roussel MF, Gottschalk S, Krenciute G. Cell surface antigen profiling of pediatric brain tumors: B7-H3 is consistently expressed and can be targeted via local or systemic CAR T-cell delivery. Neuro Oncol Dec 15:noaa278, 2020. doi: 10.1093/neuonc/noaa278. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33320196.

Prinzing B, Schreiner P, Bell M, Fan Y, Krenciute G*, Gottschalk S*. MyD88/CD40 signaling retains CAR T cells in a less differentiated state. JCI Insight Nov 5;5(21), 2020. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.136093. PubMed PMID: 33148882. *co-senior authors

Wagner J, Wickman E, Shaw TI, Allo Anido A, Langfitt D, Zhang J, Porter SN, Pruett-Miller SM, Tillman H, Krenciute G, Gottschalk S. Antitumor effects of CAR T cells redirected to the EDB splice variant of fibronectin. Cancer Immunol Res Dec 22:canimm.0280.2020, 2020. doi: 10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-20-0280. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33355188.

Odé Z, Condori J, Peterson N, Zhou S, Krenciute G. CRISPR-Mediated Non-Viral Site-Specific Gene Integration and Expression in T Cells: Protocol and Application for T-Cell Therapy. Cancers (Basel) Jun 26;12(6), 2020. doi: 10.3390/cancers12061704. PubMed PMID: 32604839; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7352666.

Petersen CT, Krenciute G. Next Generation CAR T Cells for the Immunotherapy of High-Grade Glioma. Front Oncol 9:69, 2019. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2019.00069. eCollection 2019. Review. PubMed PMID: 30863720; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6399104.

Prinzing BL, Gottschalk SM, Krenciute G. CAR T-cell therapy for glioblastoma: ready for the next round of clinical testing? Expert review of anticancer therapy. 2018; :1-11.PMID: 29533108

Yi Z, Brooke LP, Cao F, Gottschalk S, Krenciute G. Optimizing EphA2-CAR T cells for the Adoptive Immunotherapy of Glioma. Molecular Therapy - Methods & Clinical Development. 2018 February 15; 9:70-80.

Mata M, Gerken C, Nguyen P, Krenciute G, Spencer DM, Gottschalk S. Inducible activation of MyD88 and CD40 in CAR T-cells results in controllable and potent antitumor activity in preclinical solid tumor models. Cancer Discov. 2017 Aug 11. pii: CD-17-0263. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-17-0263. PMID: 28801306

Krenciute G, Prinzing BL, Yi Z, Wu MF, Liu H, Dotti G, Balyasnikova IV, Gottschalk S. Transgenic expression of IL15 improves antiglioma activity of IL13Ralpha2-CAR T cells but results in antigen-loss variants. Cancer Immunol Res Jul;5(7):571-581, 2017. PMID: 28550091.

Krenciute G, Krebs S, Torres D, Wu MF, Liu H, Dotti G, Li XN, Lesniak MS, Balyasnikova IV, Gottschalk S. Characterization and functional analysis of scFv-based CARs to redirect T cells to IL13Rα2-positive glioma. Mol Ther Feb;24(2):354-63, 2016 PMID: 26514825. doi: 10.1038/mt.2015.199.

See full list of publications

Last update: April 2021