Felipe Galvez-Cancino

I am a pharmacist by training, graduating from Universidad de Chile in 2014. I did my undergraduate work in 2013 at Fundacion Ciencia & Vida in Santiago, Chile, investigating the development of novel adjuvants for DNA cancer vaccines. This early training and the finding that DNA vaccination generates skin tissue-resident memory CD8⁺ T cells led to my decision to continue in graduate studies in the same laboratory. From March 2014 to April 2018, I studied the role of skin tissue-resident memory CD8⁺ T cells in protecting against cutaneous melanoma and their interaction with cross-presenting dendritic cells. Additionally, in 2016, I was also a visiting student in the Department of Immunology at Stanford University, where I focused on deciphering the contribution of the different subsets of skin dendritic cells to the generation of memory CD8⁺ T cells.

Once I graduated from my PhD, I began my postdoctoral work at the University College London Cancer Institute working on two main projects: one focused on targeting regulatory CD4⁺ T cells in glioblastoma and the other focused on identifying novel regulators of CD8⁺ T cell exhaustion in lung cancer. 

From June 2024, I am a Group Leader and Kidani Fellow at the Centre for Immuno-Oncology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine. My lab aims to understand the regulatory networks that drive immune suppression during carcinogenesis. The final goal is to identify and target novel receptor-ligand interactions that can unleash an effective immune response against cancer.