Rebecca A. Gardner, MD, is an acting instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, and attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, as well as a research associate in the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Her research currently focuses on strategies to overcome the negative regulation imposed on T cells used for adoptive immunotherapy. By disrupting receptors of negative regulation through gene modification, T cells can become resistant to a particular mode of suppression. Initial work has been done to disrupt the glucocorticoid receptor through the use of zinc finger nucleases. This allows T cells to be resistant to the immunosuppressive effects of steroids, which patients often receive as part of their primary cancer treatment, or for treatment of graft versus host disease following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This research will potentially enable more patients to benefit from T cell therapy for both the treatment of viral infections as well as for anti-tumor therapy.