Ori Wald, MD, PhD
Project Title
Development of novel localized anti-mesothelioma therapeutics to enhance immunotherapy efficacy
About the Investigator
Prof. Ori Wald is a thoracic surgeon and Head of the Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery Unit in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Hadassah Medical Center. He also serves as a Principal Investigator at the Goldyne Savad Gene Therapy Institute and the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Prof. Wald received his MD/Ph.D. in Medicine and Immunology from the Hebrew University, and In 2015, he pursued advanced clinical training in thoracic surgical oncology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He returned to Hadassah Medical Center in 2017, where he currently serves as an attending thoracic surgeon.
About the Research
Mesothelioma is a rare but aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen, usually caused by asbestos exposure. Current treatments: chemotherapy, surgery, and immunotherapy, offer limited benefit, and many patients cannot tolerate strong systemic drugs. As a result, survival remains poor, and better, safer treatments are urgently needed.
This project aims to develop a new way to treat mesothelioma by placing anti-cancer drugs directly inside the chest or abdominal cavity, where the tumors grow. Using advanced materials, we will create slow-release local treatments of two drugs -entinostat and cisplatin – that can act directly on the tumor while reducing harmful side effects on the rest of the body. In parallel, we will study how these local treatments interact with immunotherapy, which helps the immune system recognize and attack cancer. Early evidence suggests that entinostat can make tumors more visible to the immune system, and our goal is to understand how this process works in mesothelioma. We will analyze how the tumor and immune cells change after treatment, using state-of-the-art genetic and molecular technologies.
Ultimately, this project seeks to give mesothelioma patients better outcomes and a higher quality of life, while also advancing scientific understanding of how to combine local and systemic cancer therapies safely and effectively.
