Kristen Shema

PhD Candidate

I am developing an in vitro tumor model that preserves endogenous, diverse cellular infiltrates of the tumor microenvironment to study immunotherapy responses in a high throughput manner. My work in biopharmaceutical R&D industry positions performing antibody discovery and preclinical development in combination with my research experience and graduate education in immunoengineering have provided me with a comprehensive, translational perspective and a deep interest in advancing technologies pertinent to immunotherapy.

Current Research

I am using TIvatar to understand how different cell populations of the TIME contribute to therapy response or nonresponse in various tumor models. In collaboration with UChicago Medicine, I have also optimized TIvatar to screen immunotherapy response of freshly resected ovarian tumors. I will use this in vitro immunotherapy response data to interrogate paired whole exome sequencing (WES) and single cell RNAseq (scRNAseq) datasets to identify tumor-intrinsic features that contribute to immunotherapy responsiveness in ovarian cancer patients.