Kelsey Monson, PhD
Deciphering Spatiotemporal T Cell Clonal Dynamics to Optimize Immunotherapy in Ovarian Cancer
2026 Mentored Investigator Grant
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Project Summary
This project will explore dynamic changes in the immune cells of ovarian cancer patients receiving immunotherapy, at treatment that kills cancer using the patient’s immune system. Using blood and tumor samples from an immunotherapy clinical trial, we will map the location of individual immune cells within the tumor, and study how they change after treatment by tracking them in the blood. We will also use a new patient-derived live tumor tissue model to study in real-time how these cells respond to treatment. These experiments aim to predict which patients will benefit from treatment and improve how we treat ovarian cancer.
Bio
Kelsey Monson is a postdoctoral research fellow and molecular epidemiologist with over 10 years of experience in translational oncology research. After completing her BA at Sarah Lawrence College in 2013, she worked for five years in the Early Drug Development Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She obtained her MS in epidemiology from Columbia University in 2018 and completed her PhD in molecular epidemiology at New York University in 2024. Her expertise lies in multi-omics profiling of biospecimens from immunotherapy-treated cancer patients, exploring genomic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic biomarkers to predict treatment outcomes. Her doctoral research identified novel inherited biomarkers of response and toxicity in the circulating immune cells of melanoma patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Her current research explores dynamic changes in circulating and tumor-infiltrating immune cells in immunotherapy-treated ovarian cancer patients using multi-omics sequencing and high-resolution spatial profiling. She is passionate about scientific mentorship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and fostering creativity in science, and has co-founded the NYC Postdoctoral “Night Science” Forum, a regional initiative to cultivate innovative thinking among early-career researchers.