Research Team

Principal Investigator

Amir Mian, MD, MBA

Pediatric Oncology/Hematology
Pediatric Hematology & Oncology

As a Pediatric Oncologist, I have a passion for taking care of patients with complex oncologic and bone marrow transplant (BMT) related issues. My philosophy in clinical practice rests on a family-centered approach with the goal to achieve standardized quality metrics, with data-driven decision making and keeping an open mind for innovation in medicine. Our divisional goals are to expand clinical services, initiate bone marrow transplant programs and launch multi-disciplinary clinics that adds value to the patients.

I graduated from Allama Iqbal Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan, was a Pediatric Resident and Chief Resident at Beth Israel Medical Center, NY, and then completed my fellowship at Cincinnati Children's Hospital with an additional year of training in BMT. I also have an added interest in health care economics and completed an MBA in 2018. I am honored to be associated with Augusta University, which is a world-class, academic health care network. At Children's Hospital of Georgia, our team offers the most comprehensive, highest quality care, closer to home.

Co-Principal Investigator

Theodore Johnson, MD

Pediatric Oncology/Hematology
Pediatric Hematology & Oncology
Pediatric General and Adolescent Medicine

Inflammatory processes complicate the care and prognosis of pediatric hematology/oncology patients through poorly understood pathophysiological mechanisms. In the laboratory, we study these processes carefully. As a clinician I am broadly interested in how such pathological inflammation can drive disease evolution, such as the long-term organic consequences in sickle cell anemia or tumorigenesis in solid-tumor cancers. I care for pediatric and young adult patients with a wide variety of blood diseases and cancers, and my ultimate goal as a physician-scientist is to improve patient outcomes by advancing our understanding of these diseases.

Neoplastic processes actively create immunosuppressive environments that drive systemic tolerance to cancer cells. Tumors develop exquisitely complex stromal networks that promote growth despite the presence of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. Although tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) appear to be fully competent APCs, they process immense volumes of dead and dying tumor cells without inciting adaptive immune responses. Our laboratory uses a variety of solid tumor models to study the role of TAMs in regulating anti-tumor immune responses. We employ an inducible macrophage deletion strategy to study the mechanistic role of TAMs in promoting tumor growth and progression. By inducibly deleting TAMs, we can determine their direct effects on tumor growth and survival, the inflammatory tumor microenvironment and resulting cytokine milieu, and the magnitude of anti-tumor immune responses. We also study the role of TAMs in recruiting inhibitory dendritic cells and regulatory T cells to tumor-draining lymph nodes. The overall objective of these studies is to define the mechanisms by which TAMs promote tumor survival and immune suppression in order to identify therapeutic targets for the development of small-molecule therapies and cellular immunotherapy.