Systemic Immunity and the Cancer Macroenvironment
We are fascinated by where different steps of an immune response take place across the body and how these processes are coordinated across locations.
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While most studies in cancer immunology have focused on processes taking place within the tumor itself (i.e., the tumor microenvironment), we now understand that immune responses outside the tumor are critical for effective anti-tumor immunity. We found that cancer development changes the set point of the immune system broadly outside of the tumor, impacting both the types of immune cells that are present in different sites as well as the function of the immune system.
Ongoing studies in the lab aim to understand how cancer immunotherapies work in the context of different immune macroenvironments. We are interested in how and where immunotherapies activate immune cells and how these responses are coordinated across anatomic locations. We are also studying ways to improve T cell priming in the context of cancer, a new barrier that we recently discovered. Our studies leverage various mouse models of cancer and strong collaborations with the UCSF Head and Neck Oncology and Breast Oncology Programs, enabling us to study these processes in patients with cancer.
Research Team
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PhD Student, Biomedical Sciences
Casey received her B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University where she studies purified hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in the Blood and Marrow Transplant Department. Additionally, she collaborated with laboratories in the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department and the Stem Cell Institute. Casey joined the Biomedical Science Graduate program in 2017 and is co-mentored by Dr. Spitzer and Dr. Kole Roybal. Her graduate work combines synthetic approaches to cancer immunotherapy with the systems immunology perspective pioneered in the Spitzer lab. Casey has been supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
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PhD Student, Biomedical Sciences
Jackie received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UC Davis where she studied molecular mechanisms of mechanotransduction in epithelial cells in the lab of Dr. Soichiro Yamada. She also studied proteasome regulation and cardiac tissue engineering in various labs over the summer before becoming interested in cancer immunology. After graduating, Jackie worked at Genentech designing human immunology assays for drug development. Currently, she is a UCSF BMS graduate student in the Spitzer Lab where she studies the signals that regulate tumor-specific CD8 T cell differentiation across immune compartments. Jackie is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Maha received her B.S in Chemical Engineering from UCLA, and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UCI. There, she developed a platform to extend the multiplexing capabilities of traditional fluorescence imaging by leveraging the fluorescence lifetime of molecular probes. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Spitzer lab, Maha applies multiplexed imaging to study the immune response in breast cancer, before treatment and in response to immunotherapy.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Radiation Oncology Resident
Nam Woo received his B.A. in Biology at Harvard College, then completed his M.D., Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied mechanisms of DNA repair at telomeres under his graduate thesis adviser, Dr. Roger Greenberg. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Spitzer lab, he is investigating how deficiencies of DNA repair in cancer affect antitumor immunity.
PhD Student, Biomedical Sciences
Rachel (they/them) received their B.S. in Biochemistry from Northeastern University, and had the opportunity to work in several research settings during her time in Boston. Much of their research experience stems from working at a couple of small biotechnology companies in Cambridge, MA developing cellular immunotherapies for cancer. In the Spitzer lab, Rachel is using systems approaches to study how tumors affect dendritic cell functionality and T cell dynamics in response to cancer and infection.
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