Alex Marson, MD, PhD

Educated and trained as an infectious disease physician as well as a biologist, Alex Marson knows how to optimize cross-disciplinary investigation. His own laboratory team comprises scientists from the fields of genomics, immunology, infectious diseases, and genome engineering.

Marson launched his research career at UC San Francisco in 2012, focusing on using CRISPR to get inside human immune cells and amplify their disease-fighting capabilities. In 2020, he joined Gladstone Institutes to direct the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology. Here, his team is genetically modifying cells to create “living medicines” that can fight cancer, infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases.

After earning an MPhil in biological sciences from Cambridge University in 2003, Marson complemented that with a PhD in biology from Whitehead Institute at MIT in 2008. There he worked closely with two pioneers of gene regulation, Rudolf Jaenisch and Rick Young. Two years later, he completed his MD at Harvard Medical School, followed by an internship and residency at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Marson serves as the scientific director for biomedicine at the Innovative Genomics Institute, founded by Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna. He is a director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Gladstone Institutes and was chosen one of the inaugural investigators at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Marson also co-founded Arsenal Bio, Site Tx, Survey Genomics, and Spotlight Therapeutics, and he serves on the scientific advisory boards for Amgen, NewLimit and Tenaya Therapeutics.