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 Leader at Editas Medicine from 2021 to 2024. He has published 31 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals (Citation >5700, h-index = 23) and filed 26 patent applications in different countries, laying the groundwork for two startup companies and an innovative therapy tested in Phase I clinical trial.

 

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 described and demonstrated the potential of "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:

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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