Exploitation of immune cells as therapeutic agents to target and eradicate cancer,

Dr. Al-Muftah's research focuses on the exploitation of immune cells as therapeutic agents to target and eradicate cancer, particularly to design and arm T-lymphocytes with chimeric antigen receptors to specifically target a tumor associated antigen. Furthermore, she is interested in understanding how endogenous expression of the target antigen impacts the efficacy of this type of immunotherapy, particularly the effect of immunosuppressive cells (T-regulatory cells and MDSCs) and cytokines upon cancer therapy.

Elucidating the mechanisms modulating triple negative breast cancer aggressiveness by dissecting intertumoral and intratumoral heterogeneity at the cellular and molecular levels, including immunophenotyping of the tumor microenvironment and identifying potential targets for the design of cancer immunotherapies.

Dr. Al-Muftah is also leading a project in collaboration with Dr. Lotfi Chouchane and Dr. Konduru Sastry from Weil Cornel Medical College in Qatar to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of prostate cancer into the castration-resistant state, with the aim of identify key pro- and anti-apoptotic molecules and microRNAs that render prostate cancer cells at advanced stage resistant to therapy.