Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology Seminar
Deb Sen, PhD
Debattama "Deb" Sen, PhD, is a principal investigator in the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Cancer Research and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.S. from Columbia University in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science before training with Nick Haining at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her principal research focus has been understanding the regulatory pathways that drive immune dysfunction in chronic viral infection and tumors, as well as exploring strategies to reverse these changes.
The Sen laboratory investigates the regulation of T cell dysfunction and explores epigenetic approaches for T cell engineering. Their work lies at the interface of human immunology, systems biology, and functional epigenomics—merging clinical observations with mechanistic mouse studies to develop novel therapeutic strategies. They have found that the regulatory “circuitry” of dysfunctional T cells differs remarkably from functional T cells fighting off acute viruses. By comparing chronic viral infections and cancer, they showed that this altered epigenetic wiring is a fundamental adaptation to chronic diseases and cannot be rescued by current treatments. Therefore, improved mechanistic understanding of this altered regulation will be critically important for reversing cancer-associated immune dysfunction. They are also exploring radical new approaches where they can “tune” specific components of the circuitry in immune cells to fix their pathological state in cancer while preserving their physiological role in other contexts, so that they can minimize unwanted side-effects in patients.
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Gladstone and UCSFContact(s)
The Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology Seminar Series showcases speakers at the intersection of genomic technology and immunology research with an aim to engineer the human immune system for therapeutic benefit. Speakers span technology development, synthetic biology, bioengineering, and the development and clinical application of immunotherapy. These talks are open to the Gladstone and UCSF communities.
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