What if we could harness our own immune system to treat any human disease? Our ability to achieve long-lasting immunity to cancer in some people using immunotherapy indicates this could be possible. However, we remain limited in both the patients and conditions we can treat because we don’t fully understand how the immune system works and have only a few proven ways to control immune responses. New approaches to interrogate and modulate immunity will be needed to realize the full potential of immunotherapy for human health.
Cell surface sugars called glycans influence nearly every immunological process, but have been historically overlooked because they are difficult to study and therapeutically target. My lab is developing technologies that will uniquely allow us to understand and engineer the immune response to glycans. Our work promises to establish new immunotherapy targets and mechanisms of action, advancing our ability to engineer immunity to cancer, autoimmunity, and beyond.
Awards and Achievements
- NIH Director's New Innovator Award ( 2026)
- Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize ( 2026)
- The V Foundation V Scholar Award ( 2024)
- Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface ( 2023)
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Steven A. Rosenberg Scholars Award ( 2023)
- Broad Institute Next Generation in Biomedicine ( 2022)
- Best of BIOT Award, American Chemical Society ( 2022)