Dr. Kristin G. Anderson

Dr. Kristin G. Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, USA. She is also a member of the Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research and the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Anderson received her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Minnesota, where she studied immune responses to lung infection and developed a method that is now widely used in the field to discriminate between immune cells in the blood from those in the tissue. During her postdoctoral training at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, she pivoted her research focus to immunotherapy, which enhances the immune system to kill cancer. Her current research uses genetic engineering to improve immune cell killing in solid tumors, with the ultimate goal of translating her findings into treatments for patients. She leads a team that uses patient samples to identify obstacles in the tumor microenvironment that block the immune system, then she uses models of cancer that recapitulate these features in the lab to evaluate strategies that improve the function of genetically engineered anti-tumor T cells.