"Your immune system handles really complicated tasks — any time you’re able to figure out some mechanism, it’s like solving a real-world puzzle."
— Dr. Shivani Srivastava
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Srivastava
Shivani Srivastava, PhD
- Assistant Professor, Human Biology Division, Fred Hutch
- Member, Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center (IIRC), Fred Hutch
- Member, Translational Data Science Integrated Research Center (TDS IRC), Fred Hutch
Background
Dr. Shivani Srivastava works to improve cancer immunotherapies, treatments which harness the immune system to treat tumors. In particular, she focuses on immune cells known as T cells, which can seek out and selectively kill infected or diseased cells. Capitalizing on this ability, scientists have genetically engineered T cells to kill tumor cells. The first F.D.A.-approved T-cell based immunotherapies used a lab-created anti-cancer receptor known as a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, to guide engineered T cells to cancer. Dr. Srivastava aims to make CAR-T cell therapies even more effective by applying insights gleaned from studying how normal T cells respond to disease. To do this, she uses cutting-edge technologies to examine how normal and engineered T cells perform within tumors in order to identify and remove the barriers that block CAR T cells from working optimally.
Education
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 2020, Postdoc (Cancer Immunotherapy)
University of Washington, 2014, PhD (Immunology)
Stanford University, 2009, MS (Biological Sciences)
Stanford University, 2008, BS (Biological Sciences), BA (Religious Studies)