James C. Yang, M.D.

Center for Cancer Research
National Cancer Institute

Building 10 CRC, Room 3-5952
Bethesda, MD 20892
240-760-6223
james_yang@nih.gov

Senior Investigator

Surgery Branch

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Dr. Yang is involved in the clinical and scientific study of T-cell adoptive therapy and other immunotherapies to treat melanoma and other cancers. He is particularly interested in expanding these modalities to other cancers such as renal, lung and thyroid cancer and is initiating these clinical protocols. His laboratory efforts have concentrated on the development of novel antigen receptors for T-cells with optimized specificity and efficacy in treating cancers.

Areas of Expertise

Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy

Melanoma/Skin Cancer

Kidney Cancer

T-Cell Adoptive Transfer

Clinical Trials
Research
Publications
Biography
Job Vacancies
Team
News

Open - Recruiting

Administering Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes Transduced With a Murine T-Cell Receptor Recognizing the G12D Variant of Mutated RAS in HLA-A*11:01 Patients

Protocol ID
19-C-0017

Investigator

James C. Yang, M.D.

Referral Contacts

NCI Surgery Branch Immunotherapy Recruitment Center
Open - Recruiting

Administering Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes Transduced With a Murine T-Cell Receptor Recognizing the G12V Variant of Mutated RAS in HLA-A*11:01 Patients

Protocol ID
17-C-0113

Investigator

James C. Yang, M.D.

Referral Contacts

NCI Surgery Branch Immunotherapy Recruitment Center
Open - Recruiting

Administering Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes Transduced With a CD70-Binding Chimeric Antigen Receptor to People With CD70 Expressing Cancers

Protocol ID
16-C-0131

Investigator

James C. Yang, M.D.

Referral Contacts

NCI Surgery Branch Immunotherapy Recruitment Center
Open - Recruiting

T Cell Receptor Immunotherapy for Patients With Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Protocol ID
14-C-0104

Investigator

James C. Yang, M.D.

Referral Contacts

NCI Surgery Branch Immunotherapy Recruitment Center

Research

Immune Rejection Mechanisms in Melanoma, Renal Cancer and Other Human Cancers

Our laboratory's major interest is in understanding the mechanisms of immune tumor rejection and then developing reagents to translate this understanding into clinical trials. In the last decade, it has been established that the immune system can cause the complete and durable rejection of certain metastatic cancers in some individuals. Our understanding of this process has been greatly enhanced by the discovery of several dozen tumor-associated antigens expressed by human melanoma, which can be recognized by tumor-reactive T cells. At this point, our major new challenges include:

Understanding why human melanomas frequently contain tumor-reactive T cells in their tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and why other human tumors appear not to
Discovering why human renal cancers respond to immunotherapies very similarly to melanomas, even without containing tumor-reactive TIL
Developing the reagents necessary to induce T-cell-mediated rejection of non-melanoma tumors based on principles learned from treating melanoma with T-cell adoptive transfer

Publications

Recognition of human gastrointestinal cancer neoantigens by circulating PD-1+ lymphocytes

Gros A, Tran E, Parkhurst MR, Ilyas S, Pasetto A, Groh EM, Robbins PF, Yossef R, Garcia-Garijo A, Fajardo CA, Prickett TD, Jia L, Gartner JJ, Ray S, Ngo L, Wunderllich JR, Yang JC, Rosenberg SA.

J Clin Invest. 129(11): 4992-5004, 2019. [ Journal Article ]

Mutated RAS: Targeting the "Untargetable" With T Cells

Chatani PD, Yang JC.

Clin Cancer Res. 26(3): 537-44, 2020. [ Journal Article ]

A Phase II Study of Tumor-infiltrating Lymphocyte Therapy for Human Papillomavirus-associated Epithelial Cancers

Stevanović S, Helman SR, Wunderlich JR, Langhan MM, Doran SL, Kwong MLM, Somerville RPT, Klebanoff CA, Kammula US, Sherry RM, Yang JC, Rosenberg SA, Hinrichs CS.

Clin Cancer Res. 25(5): 1486-93, 2019. [ Journal Article ]

Treatment of Patients With Metastatic Cancer Using a Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II-Restricted T-Cell Receptor Targeting the Cancer Germline Antigen MAGE-A3

Lu YC, Parker LL, Lu T, Zheng Z, Toomey MA, White DE, Yao X, Li YF, Robbins PF, Feldman SA, van der Bruggen P, Klebanoff CA, Goff SL, Sherry RM, Kammula US, Yang JC, Rosenberg SA.

J Clin Oncol. 35(29): 3322-29, 2017. [ Journal Article ]

Treatment of metastatic uveal melanoma with adoptive transfer of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes: a single-centre, two-stage, single-arm, phase 2 study

Chandran SS, Somerville RPT, Yang JC, Sherry RM, Klebanoff CA, Goff SL, Wunderlich JR, Danforth DN, Zlott D, Paria BC, Sabesan AC, Srivastava AK, Xi L, Pham TH, Raffeld M, White DE, Toomey MA, Rosenberg SA, Kammula US.

Lancet Oncol. 18(6): 792-802, 2017. [ Journal Article ]

Biography

Senior Investigator

James C. Yang, M.D.

Dr. Yang graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S. in biology. He then completed his M.D. and surgical internship and residency at the University of California, San Diego. In 1984, he came to the Surgery Branch, NCI, as a medical staff fellow. He subsequently became a senior staff fellow, then a senior investigator in 1987. He has been involved in studies of the immune response to tumor-associated antigens and has been a principal investigator of clinical trials in renal cell carcinoma and soft tissue sarcoma.