Nourhan E. H. Abdelfattah

Cancer immunology · tumor microenvironment · neuroinflammation

Single-cell & spatial multi-omics

I am a computational and translational biologist with 10+ years of experience integrating single-cell, spatial, bulk multi-omics, and proteomics to generate mechanistic insight, biomarker hypotheses, and therapeutic strategies in oncology and neurological disease. My work spans a hybrid of experimental and computational biology, contributing end-to-end from study design, assay design, and in vivo modeling through multi-omics analysis, artifact detection, and interpretation.

My current research asks how biological sex shapes immune function, therapeutic response, and neuroimmune disease biology at the intersection of cancer immunology, sex biased immune responses, neuroinflammation, and computational biology. Recent first- and co-first-author studies in Cancer Cell and Nature Communications span tumor immunology, sex-biased immune evasion (the male-biased YAP1–CD276/B7-H3 axis in medulloblastoma), clinical-trial molecular discovery in colorectal cancer, and pan-cancer myeloid biology.

Alongside the biology, I build open-source software that makes rigorous single-cell and spatial analysis reproducible and teachable — including scSidekick, RNAseqWizard, and MatchLR. See the publications and projects pages for details, or read the CV.

latest posts

selected publications

Male-biased Yap1-Cd276/B7-H3 axis for immune evasion in medulloblastoma

Nourhan Abdelfattah, S. Natarajan, H. N. Tran, and 14 more authors

Cancer Cell, 2026

DOI Bib HTML

@article{abdelfattah2026yap1,
  title = {Male-biased Yap1-Cd276/B7-H3 axis for immune evasion in medulloblastoma},
  author = {Abdelfattah, Nourhan and Natarajan, S. and Tran, H. N. and Wong, T. and Faisal, M. and Maldonado, J. and McMinimy, R. and Borland, H. and Chen, S. H. and Zhao, H. and Vasquez, M. and Rodriguez, F. F. and Wagner, C. R. and Camargo, F. and Olson, J. and George, Joshy and Yun, Kyuson},
  journal = {Cancer Cell},
  volume = {44},
  number = {4},
  pages = {760--776.e8},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ccell.2026.01.005},
}

Phase I/II trial of encorafenib, cetuximab, and nivolumab in microsatellite stable, BRAFV600E metastatic colorectal cancer

V. K. Morris, C. M. Parseghian, V. Bahrambeigi, and 2 more authors

Cancer Cell. ^*Co-first author , 2025

DOI Bib HTML

@article{morris2025crc,
  title = {Phase I/II trial of encorafenib, cetuximab, and nivolumab in microsatellite stable, BRAFV600E metastatic colorectal cancer},
  author = {Morris, V. K. and Parseghian, C. M. and Bahrambeigi, V. and Abdelfattah, Nourhan and others},
  journal = {Cancer Cell},
  volume = {43},
  pages = {2106--2118.e3},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ccell.2025.08.002},
}

Epigenetic silencing of DNA sensing pathway by FOXM1 blocks stress ligand-dependent antitumor immunity and immune memory

S. Timilsina, J. Y. Huang, Nourhan Abdelfattah, and 1 more author

Nature Communications. ^*Co-first author , 2025

DOI Bib HTML

@article{timilsina2025foxm1,
  title = {Epigenetic silencing of DNA sensing pathway by FOXM1 blocks stress ligand-dependent antitumor immunity and immune memory},
  author = {Timilsina, S. and Huang, J. Y. and Abdelfattah, Nourhan and others},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  volume = {16},
  pages = {3967},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-59186-3},
}

Single-cell analysis of human glioma and immune cells identifies S100A4 as an immunotherapy target

Nourhan Abdelfattah, Parveen Kumar, Caiyi Wang, and 17 more authors

Nature Communications. ^*Co-first author , 2022

DOI Bib HTML

@article{abdelfattah2022s100a4,
  title = {Single-cell analysis of human glioma and immune cells identifies S100A4 as an immunotherapy target},
  author = {Abdelfattah, Nourhan and Kumar, Parveen and Wang, Caiyi and Leu, Jia-Shiun and Flynn, William F. and Gao, Ruli and Baskin, David S. and Pichumani, Kumar and Ijare, Omkar B. and Wood, Stephanie L. and Powell, Suzanne Z. and Haviland, David L. and Parker Kerrigan, Brittany C. and Lang, Frederick F. and Prabhu, Sujit S. and Huntoon, Kristin M. and Jiang, Wen and Kim, Betty Y. S. and George, Joshy and Yun, Kyuson},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  volume = {13},
  pages = {767},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-28372-y},
}

MiR-584-5p potentiates vincristine and radiation response by inducing spindle defects and DNA damage in medulloblastoma

Nourhan Abdelfattah, S. Rajamanickam, S. Panneerdoss, and 7 more authors

Nature Communications, 2018

DOI Bib HTML

@article{abdelfattah2018mir584,
  title = {MiR-584-5p potentiates vincristine and radiation response by inducing spindle defects and DNA damage in medulloblastoma},
  author = {Abdelfattah, Nourhan and Rajamanickam, S. and Panneerdoss, S. and Timilsina, S. and Onyeagucha, B. C. and Garcia, M. and Chen, Y. and Brenner, A. and Houghton, P. and Rao, Manjeet K.},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  volume = {9},
  pages = {4541},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-018-06808-8},
}