Investigator Profile: Venu G. Pillarisetty, MD, FACS
Venu G. Pillarisetty, MD, FACS
Professor, Division of General Surgery
Principal Investigator, UW Tumor Immune Microenvironment (TIME) Lab
The goal of the UW TIME Lab is to develop a precise understanding of the nature of the adaptive immune response to solid tumors to develop more effective immunotherapies. While much of our work focuses on pancreatic and colorectal carcinomas and fibrolamellar cancer of the liver, we are particularly interested in shedding light on aspects of tumor biology that reach across many tumor types. Our central goal is to address how the immunosuppressive microenvironment created by solid tumors can be tuned to enable reactivation of endogenous T cell responses that promote tumor killing. In concert with this work, we are also finding that adoptively transferred T cells (e.g. CAR-T cells) are subject to similar mechanisms of immunosuppression in the TIME. Our work has provided the basis for an immunotherapy clinical trial for patients with pancreatic cancer before they undergo surgery.