Robert M Prins is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He leads the Robert Prins Lab at UCLA, which focuses on developing novel immunotherapies for brain tumors, particularly glioblastoma. Dr. Prins received his B.S. in Kinesiology (1992) and M.S. in Physiological Science (1996) from UCLA, followed by a Ph.D. in Anatomy & Immunology from the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University (2001). He completed fellowships in Tumor Immunology at Cedars-Sinai Neurosurgical Institute (2002) and Brain Tumor Immunotherapy at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (2003). His research focuses on brain tumor immunology and immunotherapy, with particular emphasis on dendritic cell vaccination, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and adoptive T cell therapy for glioblastoma. Dr. Prins has secured multiple NIH grants as Principal Investigator, including current funding for neoadjuvant checkpoint blockade for recurrent glioblastoma (R01CA267726) and identification of neoantigen-specific T cells for GBM immunotherapy (R01CA222695). Dr. Prins' work has demonstrated the potential of neoadjuvant immunotherapy approaches for glioblastoma, showing that early administration of immune checkpoint inhibitors before surgery can induce significant immune responses within the tumor microenvironment. His research has also explored mechanisms of immunotherapy resistance in brain tumors and strategies to overcome these barriers. He has published extensively in high-impact journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, and Neuro-Oncology, with his most recent work focusing on spatial immune profiling of glioblastoma, CAR-T cell therapies, and epigenetic approaches to enhance immunotherapy efficacy. Dr. Prins is actively involved in clinical translation of his research findings, with several clinical trials underway at UCLA to evaluate novel immunotherapeutic approaches for patients with malignant brain tumors.
