Joon Seok Park, PhD

Immunotherapy is a transformative cancer treatment. It helps the body’s immune system find and kill cancer cells. This treatment has saved many lives, but some patients still do not respond. To help more people, we need to learn why immunotherapy works in some cases but not in others. One answer may be in the gut. The human gut has trillions of bacteria. Some of these bacteria can make immunotherapy stronger. They may even help fight cancers in other parts of the body, like the lungs, skin, or breast. Our team recently found a new type of gut bacterium that helps immunotherapy work better. We are now studying how this bacterium helps the immune system fight cancer outside the gut. We look at the substances these bacteria make and how they support immune cells, even inside tumors. Our goal is to turn these findings into new treatments. This could allow more patients to benefit from immunotherapy and bring new hope to people living with cancer.