Natasha Pinto Medici, PhD

I am a microbiologist/immunologist with background in host-pathogen interactions and in molecular immunology that spans over 10 years of training. My doctoral work led to the discovery of how virulence factors activate inflammation responses in macrophages, and these findings impact our understanding of how we can develop therapeutics suitable for auto-immune diseases. With my thorough understanding that the immune system is a principal site that determines disease prognosis, I became motivated to pursue the study of its molecular regulation in pancreatic cancer, based on its high resistant to the best standard-of-care therapeutics we have and very short survival. In addition, while immunotherapy has shown promise in many cancers, pancreatic cancer is refractory to the current best immunotherapies available, suggesting that additional work is required to understand what makes the immune system in pancreatic cancer different and whether these differences can reveal therapeutic opportunities.