As cancer treatments continue their evolution while new exciting prospects emerge, one UNLV alumna is doing her part to mitigate one of the world’s most unrelenting maladies.

“At UNLV, Dr. [Steen] Madsen provided the radiation therapy expertise, Dr. [Henry] Hirschberg provided the nanoparticle expertise, and I had the immunotherapy experience. This collaborative spirit led to the generation of new ideas that I took with me into my Ph.D. program and is something I see in my job now,” said Amani Makkouk, a ’10 MS Health Physics. “When you collaborate with different fields, you always generate new and exciting ideas.”

Makkouk now oversees biomarker strategies for immunotherapy clinical trials as an associate director at AbbVie, a pharmaceutical company developing new cancer research and treatments.

At AbbVie, Makkouk works in the field of CAR-T Cell therapy, a novel type of immunotherapy where immune cells, called T cells, are engineered to create a better version of themselves so they can kill cancerous cells more easily. Conventionally, cells can be engineered after they are taken out of the patient or, in a more novel approach, while still inside the patient.

“This has led to cures, which has been a dream in the cancer field,” Makkouk said. “At AbbVie, we work on setting up clinical trials to put our cutting-edge therapies into patients. They work on enhancing the immune system so it can fight cancer better. How can we know if the drug is working properly? And how can we identify which patients will benefit most from our treatment? That is what we seek to find.”

Makkouk was born and raised in Lebanon before she came to the U.S. to pursue her master’s degree in health physics at UNLV in 2008. With her background in pharmacy and an interest in immunology, Makkouk was enticed by the opportunity to learn more about radiation therapy.

“I discovered that radiation therapy in Las Vegas was a strong field for application and research,” she recalled. “UNLV was a main leader in this field, and Dr. Madsen was a guru in novel radiation therapies. I wanted to get my degree from a university where this was their expertise.”

As a graduate student living in a distant country, Makkouk excelled in her studies at UNLV, due in large part to the support, she said, that she received from the campus community.

“We met with the graduate student association who introduced us to life in the U.S. They provided us with a lot of resources and support,” she recalled. “They had a lot of diversity initiatives and I really loved that. The campus was very accessible and my memories from there will always be ingrained in my mind.” 

She found two key mentors at UNLV: Steen Madsen, professor and chair of the Department of Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences, whose research focuses on the therapeutic uses of light- and ultrasound-based approaches for the treatment of malignant brain tumors; and adjunct professor Dr. Henry Hirschberg, who also serves as research professor at the Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic at the University of California, Irvine.

Under Madsen’s tutelage, Makkouk completed her master’s thesis on nanoparticle-based radiation therapy in less time than Madsen said it would typically take for a project of that complexity.

“Amani was a quick learner and was able to generate results very quickly which can be difficult when you’re working on a master’s project,” Madsen recalled. “The project I had her working on was very difficult. She had some background in pharmacology and I thought she’d be able to learn the different techniques that were required for her particular project. She was incredible.”

After UNLV, Makkouk studied under Dr. George Wiener, director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa, for her Ph.D. program. The transition from a sleepless, desert metropolis to America’s heartland was stark, but Makkouk said the main reason she had been accepted into Iowa’s rigorous Ph.D. program was because of the experience she gained working with nanoparticles in Madsen’s lab at UNLV.

After finishing her graduate studies, Makkouk found herself out West again, this time in a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford. She worked with a few pharmaceutical start-up companies to generate immunotherapy treatments before transitioning to the clinical biomarker field. 

“To see your students succeed — it’s something we all strive for,” Madsen said of Makkouk. “Knowing Amani and seeing her motivation, I had a feeling that she was going to accomplish something big.”

Although she left UNLV more than a decade ago, Makkouk looks back fondly on the university that helped set her on the course for her eventual goal: finding a cure for cancer.