Dr. Shivani Srivastava is a V Translational Grantee and an Assistant Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where her work focuses on strengthening cancer immunotherapy, treatments that harness the immune system to recognize and destroy tumors. Engineered T cell therapies have produced remarkable results in blood cancers, but they have had limited success in common solid tumors such as lung and breast cancer. Dr. Srivastava’s research is centered on a critical question: how to keep immune cells strong and active inside tumors that actively suppress and exhaust them. Her laboratory has developed advanced models that closely mimic how human lung tumors grow and respond to therapy. Using these models, her team has shown that engineered T cells can be “recharged” to regain their tumor-killing ability in a significant subset of cases, and her work has already helped inform the design of an upcoming clinical trial. Now, with support from the V Foundation, Dr. Srivastava is working to understand why some tumors still escape immune attack and to identify combination strategies that could make immune cell therapies more durable and effective. Her work aims to expand the reach of immunotherapy to the cancers that need it most, opening new possibilities for patients facing aggressive solid tumors.
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