Dr. Alex Marson

Dr. Alex Marson

Acclaimed researcher revolutionizing medicine by using genetic engineering to cure previously untreatable diseases

Through his groundbreaking work with next-generation gene therapies, Dr. Alex Marson is on the verge of curing a host of previously untreatable diseases, including some cancers, using genetically engineered cells. Marson’s lab at the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology is pushing the boundaries of what decoded and reprogrammed cells are capable of by using powerful new CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technologies.

Marson’s team has had dramatic breakthroughs in understanding the genomics of human T cell function in health and disease. They are designing programs to make cells that can recognize and eliminate cancer, cells that are resistant to infections like HIV, and cells that can reduce inflammation in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

“We are in the golden era of biology and the science of curing diseases,” says Marson, whose lab is advancing the landscape of research in biomedicine in ways previously thought to be impossible.

Reprogrammed human immune cells are emerging as a new class of “living” medicines today… not in the distant future. Dr. Marson will join us in Sonoma to explain how cells can be engineered to protect us and modified to combat cancers and infectious and autoimmune diseases. He’ll share news of advances that are not niche; they will transform medicine – making treatments more widely accessible, offering hope for previously untreatable conditions, and addressing critical public health issues globally.

Gladstone Institutes

Dr. Marson, 45, is the Director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology and a tenured Professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at UCSF. He studied biology at Harvard and then received a master’s in biological sciences from Cambridge and a Ph.D. in biology from MIT. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School.

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