Welcome to the Jerby Lab

Dissecting and targeting (multi)cellular immune circuits to uncover mechanisms and new interventions

Leveraging multicellular cascades for cancer detection, prevention, and treatment.

Leveraging emerging technologies to unlock existing and synthetic cellular capabilities.

Livnat Jerby-Arnon
Assistant Professor
(she/her); ljerby [at] stanford [dot] edu

Jeehyun Yoe, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow

Jeehyun Yoe, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Reece Villarin Akana PhD Student, Cancer Biology

Reece Villarin Akana
PhD Student, Cancer Biology

Young-Min Kim, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dixian Zhu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Olivia Laveroni Research Assistant

Olivia Laveroni
Research Assistant

Chang Sun, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Mike Tsai
PhD student, Cancer Biology

Yuxin Cai, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Christine Yiwen Yeh MD/ PhD Student, BMI; co-advisor Sylvia Plevritis

Christine Yiwen Yeh
MD/ PhD Student, BMI; co-advised by Sylvia Plevritis

Kristen Frombach
PhD student, Cancer Biology

Celeste Zesati Diaz
PhD student, Cancer Biology; co-advised by Jennifer Cochran

Karmen Aguirre
PhD Student, Cancer Biology

Soua Lee
Administrative Associate

Overview. We develop high-throughput, engineering-based approaches to: (1) dissect and target multicellular regulation at greater scale, resolution, and depth, focusing on the molecular mechanisms that govern innate and adaptive immune responses in cancer, (2) broaden the spectrum of immunomodulating interventions to trigger targeted immune responses in more effective and targeted ways, including antigen-independent modalities, (3) modify cells and groups of cells to augment or create new "synthetic" (multi)cellular circuits – allowing us to probe the “inner-workings” of multicellular processes and potentially form a basis for new types of disease treatment and prevention strategies.

Current efforts. Bringing together advances in genetic engineering, machine learning, and single-cell/spatial genomics, we study the interplay between cancer cells and cytotoxic lymphocytes, namely, CD8 T cells and NK cells. These types of cells are a very convenient model system, as we can modify them ex vivo, and then study them in vivo. We develop new multidisciplinary methods to identify regulators of cellular and tissue immunogenicity, and uncover mechanisms controlling lymphocyte activation/ suppression, recruitment, and infiltration.

Specific projects include: developing a multimodal perturb-seq system to identify key regulators of cancer-T-cell and cancer-NK interactions; mapping cancer-immune dynamics across time and space using emerging single-cell and spatial profiling technologies; and hybrid CRISPR-ML systems to identify combinatorial genetic perturbations to induce cytotoxic lymphocyte recruitment, infiltration and effector functions in the tumor microenvironment.

Contact information

Department of Genetics
Stanford University
Biomedical Innovation Building (BMI)
240 Pasteur Dr, Palo Alto, CA 94304
Office phone: (650) 497-0294

 
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Open positions

Job openings are available for motivated graduate students, postdocs, and research assistants, with relevant research experience. Such experience and opportunities can be either focused on (1) molecular and cell biology, immunology, and/or cancer biology,  (2) algorithm design, statistics, programming, and machine learning; or (3) the combination of the two. To apply email your CV and a brief synopsis of your research experience and interests.