Livnat Jerby, PhD

2025 Rivkin Pilot Grant

The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Project Summary
Immune cells have the remarkable ability to detect and kill cancer cells. However, for that killing to occur the immune cells need to be in direct physical contact with the cancer cells. We thus reasoned that if we could find ways to engineer immune cells in a way that will mobilize them to reach and persist within ovarian cancer tumors this could form a new cell therapy for ovarian cancer patients, where these engineered immune cells will be used as living drugs . We performed large experiments where we engineered immune cells in thousands of different ways and let these cells compete against each other, allowing us to identify those that were best at reaching ovarian cancer tumors in mice. These powerful experiments uncovered a new and effective mechanism to recruit immune cells to the tumor. Here we will use immune cell engineering and advanced molecular and genetic tools to determine how this novel mechanism of immune recruitment works. We will conduct rigorous experiments to test if this new immune cell engineering treatment strategy can safely eradicate ovarian cancer tumors in mice. We will also begin testing whether this treatment is able to generate immune memory so that the entire immune system will continue to be on the lookout to avoid disease recurrence and obtain durable responses. If successful, it will introduce and new paradigm for immune recruitment and provide a basis for a new cell therapy for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Bio
Livnat Jerby is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, and a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator. Her research brings together functional genomics, immunology, bioengineering, and synthetic biology to track, rewire, and ultimately generate new types of immune responses as a basis for disease treatment and prevention. Recent studies from her laboratory revealed novel cell immunity regulators, RNA-based synthetically lethal interventions to enhance immune surveillance, and programmable mechanisms to redirect immune cell to solid tumors. Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Jerby was a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Dr. Aviv Regev’s laboratory, where she had begun combining single-cell and CRISPR-based tools to identify key immune regulators. She holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD in life sciences and computer science from Tel Aviv University and is the recipient of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award, the Paul G. Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA) Liz Tilberis Early Career Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award, and others.