Kristin G. Anderson, PhD
Dr. Kristin G. Anderson is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington in Seattle, WA in the lab of Dr. Philip D. Greenberg. Dr. Anderson received her B.S. from the University of St. Thomas and her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Minnesota, where she studied T cell responses to lung infection and developed a method that is now widely used in the field to discriminate and isolate intravascular from tissue leukocytes. During her graduate work, she was diagnosed with and underwent treatment for localized breast cancer.
Her experience as a patient inspired her to apply her immunology training to the field of cancer biology and translational immunotherapy. Her current research focuses on developing molecular engineering strategies to improve T cell killing in ovarian cancer, with the ultimate goal of translating her findings into treatment protocols for patients. She leads a team that uses patient samples to identify immunosuppressive features in the tumor microenvironment, then uses mouse models of cancer that recapitulate these features to evaluate strategies that improve the migration, persistence, and function of genetically engineered anti-tumor T cells.
Dr. Anderson received several awards for her graduate work, including the University of Minnesota Medical Foundation’s Bacaner Research Award and the President’s Student Leadership and Service Award. For her post-doctoral work, she has been awarded an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Women In Cancer Research Award, an AACR Scholar-In-Training Award, a Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship, two American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Travel Awards, and a Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Presidential Travel Award. She has been awarded a T32 postdoctoral fellowship, as well as funding support from the Fred Hutch Solid Tumor Translational Research Program, Colleen’s Dream Foundation, the Brotman Baty Single Cell Initiative, the Fred Hutch Holiday Gala Challenge Grant, and other anonymous philanthropic donations.