Kathleen Capaccione Awarded RSNA Research Scholar Grant
Kathleen Capaccione, MD, PhD, has been awarded a 2025 Research Scholar Grant from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Research and Education Foundation. The two-year grant is awarded to junior investigators as they collect preliminary data that could lead to future funding.
Capaccione will receive a total of $200,000 for her project, Mechanisms of Response to FAP Radiotherapy with Immunotherapy in NSCLC. Her research is focused on the use of targeted radiopharmaceuticals for imaging and therapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Research has demonstrated that combining targeted radiotherapy with immunotherapy could create a lasting response in some cancers, including melanoma, and Capaccione aims to generate this response in NSCLC. Radioligand therapy (RLT) is an emerging targeted treatment that uses radioactive substances (radioisotopes) attached to molecules (ligands) that specifically bind to tumor cells, allowing for the delivery of radiation directly to the tumor. Capaccione's goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of response to combination therapy in the treatment of NSCLC.
“Based on the immune modulating mechanisms of these therapies, I hypothesize that combining FAP-RLT with immune checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy enhances tumor cell killing in NSCLC,” Capaccione said. Her lab will use in vitro patient-derived organoids, a mouse model of lung cancer, and conduct an early phase clinical trial in patients with NSCLC. Her work has the potential to lay the foundation for future preclinical work and clinical trials aimed at achieving durable therapeutic responses in NSCLC.
Capaccione joined the Department of Radiology as an assistant professor of radiology in 2023, following residency and fellowship training with the department. As a resident, she completed the prestigious American Board of Radiology Holman Pathway and received an RSNA Resident/Fellow Grant in 2019. In 2024, she was named a Louis V. Gerstner Scholar by the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
References
Selected Publications
- Kathleen M. Capaccione, Mikhail Doubrovin, Brian Braumuller, Dev Leibowitz, Nikunj Bhatt, Fatemeh Momen-Heravi, Andrei Molotkov, Michael Kissner Kimberly Goldner, Mark Soffing, Alessandra Ali, Akiva Mintz. Evaluating the Combined Anticancer Response of Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy and FAP-Targeted Molecular Radiotherapy in Murine Models of Melanoma and Lung Cancer. Cancers 2022, 14, 4575.
- Capaccione KM, Doubrovin M, Bhatt N, Mintz A, Molotkov A. Granzyme B PET Imaging of the Innate Immune Response. Molecules. 2020;25(13):E3102.
- Laetitia Vercellino, Dorine de Jong, Laurent Dercle, Benoit Hosten, Brian Braumuller, Jeeban Paul Das, Aileen Deng, Antoine Moya-Plana, Camry Vonyae' A'Keen, Randy Yeh, Pascal Merlet, Barouyr Baroudjian, Mary M. Salvatore, Kathleen M. Capaccione. Translating Molecules into Imaging- The Development of New PET Tracers for Patients with Melanoma. Diagnostics. 2022; 12(5):1116.
- Dorine de Jong, Jeeban Das, Hong Ma, Jacienta Paily Valiplackal, Conor Prendergast, Tina Roa, Brian Braumuller, Aileen Deng, Laurent Dercle, Randy Yeh, Mary M. Salvatore, Kathleen M. Capaccione. Novel Targets, Novel Treatments: The Changing Landscape of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer. Cancers. 2023; 15(10):2855.
