Dr. Achini Bandara ’09 still prefers the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, but being in the Los Angeles area has its perks. She’s near her dear friend and mentor, Dr. Don Thomas, who she met while she was in Malawi as a Wofford student. She’s back in the same state with her husband, who is an analytical chemist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and she’s doing important work in the fight against cancer and other difficult-to-treat diseases.
Bandara, who completed her doctorate at Purdue University in 2015, is a project development scientist at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, an independent teaching and research hospital specializing in cancer and diabetes. Bandara manages projects, writes grants and works with research and clinical faculty to guide cancer immunotherapy projects from the laboratory to the clinic.
“City of Hope faculty are pioneers in using CAR T cells for cancer immunotherapy, and we currently have several very exciting first-in-human clinical trials evaluating CAR T cells in advanced cancers, including gliomas and breast cancers that have metastasized to the brain,” says Bandara. “My work focuses on obtaining funding to answer new scientific questions, so I like to think that I help bring in the financial support that will ultimately grow our knowledge base as a field and lead to better therapies.”
By Jo Ann Mitchell Brasington ’89