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Alexander Marson, MD, PhD

Director, PICI Center at Gladstone Institutes; Director, Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology; Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes; Professor, Departments of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, UCSF

Biography

Alexander Marson, MD, PhD, is Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Center at Gladstone Institutes and of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology. He also is a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, and a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, at The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He serves as the scientific director for human health at the Innovative Genomics Institute and is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and Director of the PICI Center at Gladstone Institutes.

Work in the Marson Lab aims to understand the genetic programs controlling human immune cell function in health and disease, with an emphasis on developing and applying CRISPR genome engineering tools to primary immune cells, especially T cells. Combining genomics and gene editing approaches, the lab works to assess the consequences of coding and noncoding genetic variation on immune cell function and autoimmune disease risk and to genetically engineer human immune cells to target cancer, autoimmunity and infectious diseases.

Dr. Marson attended college and medical school at Harvard University. He holds an MPhil in biological sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his clinical training in infectious diseases at UCSF.

Education & Training

  • 2016: UCSF Medical Center, Research Fellow in UCSF Sandler Fellows Program, Clinical Fellow in Division of Infectious Diseases
  • 2012: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Intern and Resident, Department of Internal Medicine
  • 2010: Harvard Medical School, MD, PhD
  • 2008: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD, Biology
  • 2002: University of Cambridge, MPhil, Biology

Awards & Honors

  • 2019: Lloyd J. Old STAR Award, Cancer Research Institute
  • 2017: Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator
  • 2016: American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) Young Physician-Scientist Award
  • 2016: Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award for Medical Scientists
  • 2016: NIDA/NIH Avenir New Innovator Award