Dr. Xiaoqi (Kevin) Sun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, the Icahn Genomics Institute (IGI), the Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM), and Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Sun earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2021 and worked as a Scientist and the Non-Viral Delivery Team Head at Editas Medicine from 2021 to 2024. Dr. Sun’s pioneering work has introduced the concept of "metalloimmunotherapy," demonstrating its potential as a new class of immunotherapy and leading to the creation of Saros Therapeutic (Nature Nanotechnology 2021, Nature Biomedical Engineering 2024). He has also introduced the concept"RBC-aAPC" for T cell training, a novel cell therapy system adopted by Rubius Therapeutics for drug development and tested in Phase I clinical trial. Additionally, he co-developed a series of cancer neoantigen vaccines based on lipid nanodiscs for personalized cancer immunotherapy, laying the foundation of EVOQ Therapeutics. His contributions also extend to the development of multiple RNA LNP-based gene editing drug candidates in industry and a highly effective ex-vivo gene knock-in tool "SLEEK" (Nature Biotechnology 2023).
 

Selected Honors:

2025 DP2 New Innovator Award (NIH/NIAID)

2025 KL2 Career Development Award (NIH/ConduITS Institute at Mount Sinai)

2025 Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award

2025 CRS Immune Delivery Abstract Award

2022 Editas Medicine Excellence Award

2022 CRS PhD Thesis Award Winner

2021 AAPS Best Poster Award

2021 AAPS Best Abstract Award

2021 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

2021 Michigan Drug Discovery Grant

2018 Rackham International Student Fellowship

2015 ChinaNanomedicine 2015 “Best Poster Award”

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