Alba Rodriguez-Garcia, PhD

Dr. Rodriguez-Garcia is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Powell Jr. at the Ovarian Cancer Research Center and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her degree in Biotechnology in 2009 from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and received her PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona in 2015. Her doctoral studies were conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Ramon Alemany and focused on the development of novel anticancer therapies in the area of oncolytic adenoviruses, using them as tools to elicit antitumor immune responses. In 2015, Dr. Rodriguez-Garcia joined Dr. Powell’s laboratory, which has a strong background and expertise in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Since then, her research has focused on developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for ovarian cancer, exploring different tumor antigen targets and strategies to overcome current limitations in the field.

In 2016, she was awarded the Stand Up to Cancer Ovarian Cancer Dream Team Grant by the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation, and in 2018 she received a Meritorious Abstract Travel Award from the American Society Gene and Cell Therapy. The OCRA Ann and Sol Schreiber Mentored Investigator Award will greatly contribute to Dr. Rodriguez-Garcia’s goal of becoming an independent researcher in the field of immunotherapy for ovarian cancer.