Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD • SITC 2020 Richard V. Smalley, MD, Memorial Award and Lectureship Recipient

SITC 2020 Richard V. Smalley, MD, Memorial Lectureship Speaker

Heslop_Photo_KeynoteHarvard Medical School

Richard V. Smalley, MD, Memorial Lectureship
Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 10:30 a.m. EST
Discovery of New IO Targets and Mechanisms Leveraging CRISPR


Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD, is the George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology, Chair of the Division of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sharpe is a member of the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Co-Director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Sharpe earned her MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Sharpe is a leader in the field of T cell costimulation. Her laboratory has discovered and elucidated the functions of T cell costimulatory pathways, including the immunoinhibitory functions of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways, which have become exceptionally promising targets for cancer immunotherapy. Her laboratory currently focuses on the roles of T cell costimulatory pathways in regulating T cell tolerance and effective antimicrobial and antitumor immunity and translating fundamental understanding of T cell costimulation into new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer. Dr. Sharpe has published over 300 papers and was listed by Thomas Reuters as one of the most Highly Cited Researchers (top 1%) in 2014, 2015 and 2017 and as a Citation Laureate in 2016. She received the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology in 2014 and the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize in 2017 for her contributions to the discovery of PD-1 pathway.



"The PD-1 story emphasizes the value of discovery and curiosity-driven research. This work did not start out to understand how to cure cancer. We were studying how the immune system was regulated, and discovered a key mechanism tumors use to evade immune attack."
Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD – Harvard Medical School