Allison Institute™ Members
Allison Institute members lead the field in developing a comprehensive understanding of immunobiology, with a focus on exceptional research that bridges diverse biologic areas and enables connections with all aspects of cancer science. Members have the opportunity to collaborate and engage in groundbreaking discovery, translational and clinical research to bring the benefits of immunotherapy to all patients.
Building on a deep commitment to discovery science, Allison Institute members combine breakthroughs with insights from the clinic to advance treatment approaches that effectively integrate immunotherapy with conventional cancer therapies in synergetic combinations. By allowing these modalities to work in harmony, we can better educate and unleash immune cells for an effective anti-tumor response that can eliminate cancer, permanently.
Allison Institute members will be provided seven years of research support aligned with their membership level, with an opportunity to advance to the next level after review by leadership and the Scientific Advisory Board.
Membership Levels
Core Members
Core Members are established researchers who are widely recognized for their research contributions.
James P. Allison, Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Discovery Science & Immunological Principles, Translational Immunotherapy
Dr. Allison is Regental Professor and Chair of Immunology and director of the Allison Institute. He is recognized internationally for his foundational discoveries in T cell biology that launched the field of cancer immunotherapy. For his contributions, he was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His most notable discoveries include determining the T cell receptor structure and recognizing that CD28 is the major costimulatory molecule that allows full activation of naïve T cells and prevents anergy in T cell clones. His lab resolved a major controversy by demonstrating that CTLA-4 inhibits T cell activation by opposing CD28-mediated costimulation and that blockade of CTLA-4 could enhance T cell responses, leading to tumor rejection in animal models. He proposed and validated that blocking immune checkpoints, such as CTLA-4, can be a powerful cancer treatment strategy. These seminal findings established the field of immune checkpoint blockade therapy for cancer and led to the development of ipilimumab, the first FDA-approved immune checkpoint inhibitor. Allison’s current work seeks to improve current immune checkpoint blockade therapies and to identify new targets that will unleash the immune system to eradicate cancer.
Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Clinical Trials & Translational Immunotherapy
Dr. Sharma is professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology and Director of Scientific Programs for the Allison Institute. She is an internationally renowned physician-scientist who pioneered the first neoadjuvant clinical trial with immune checkpoint therapy in 2006, establishing safety and clinical responses in order to advance immunotherapy toward earlier disease stages. Her work also provided the first clinical data demonstrating that bladder tumors can respond to immune checkpoint therapy. Sharma performs extensive studies on patients’ tumor samples collected from neoadjuvant trials to define human immune responses within the tumor microenvironment and to identify mechanisms of response and resistance to checkpoint inhibitors. She has identified mechanisms of response to immune checkpoint therapy, including ICOS+ T cells, tertiary lymphoid structures and ARID1A mutations in combination with CXCL13 overexpression. Her work has also identified mechanisms of resistance, including VISTA+ myeloid cells, increased EZH2 expression in T cells, and loss of interferon signaling in tumor cells. These data enable Sharma to lead innovative pre-clinical and clinical studies testing new combination immunotherapies and biomarkers. As a core member, she will work closely with other researchers to build scientific teams that bridge multiple areas of expertise to design novel treatment strategies.
Jennifer Wargo, M.D.
Research Priority Area: Discovery Science & Immunological Principles, Clinical Trials and Translational Immunotherapy
Dr. Wargo is professor of Surgical Oncology and Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson and serves as Co-Chair of the Allison Institute Internal Advisory Council. She also leads the institution's Platform for Innovative Microbiome and Translational Research (PRIME-TR). A world-renowned physician-scientist, Wargo pioneered a new understanding of how the gut microbiome influences responses to immunotherapy and other cancer treatments. Through this research, she and her team have determined how microbiome changes can positively impact immunotherapy responses, leading to an ongoing dietary intervention trial in melanoma. As a core member, Wargo will continue to lead innovative research on the impact of the gut and tumor microbiome on cancer and immunotherapy responses. She is committed to advancing the understanding and treatment of disease through science, and she is deeply invested in working broadly with investigators to find better ways to treat, intercept and prevent cancer.
Associate Members
Associate Members are mid-career researchers who have made significant contributions to the field.
Susan Bullman, Ph.D.
Dr. Bullman, associate professor of Immunology, was recruited from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. She and her team study the role of the intratumoral microbiome on cancer progression and patient response to treatments. Bullman completed her graduate research in Ireland and her postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute in the laboratory of Matthew Meyerson, M.D., Ph.D. She was an instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School before joining Fred Hutchinson in 2019. Bullman’s laboratory combines pre-clinical cancer models, molecular microbiology and in situ imaging together with spatial and single-cell sequencing approaches to understand host-microbial interactions within the tumor microenvironment.
Xi Chen, Ph.D.
Dr. Chen, an associate professor of Experimental Therapeutics, received his Ph.D. from the Genome Institute of Singapore and National University of Singapore in the laboratory of Huck Hui Ng, Ph.D. There, Chen was one of the first to use chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing (ChIP-seq) technology to discover the genomic regions now known as super enhancers. As a postdoctoral fellow with Laurie Glimcher, M.D., at the Harvard University School of Public Health, he established a connection between the Unfolded Protein Response and triple-negative breast cancer. Chen joined Baylor College of Medicine as a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) scholar in 2015 and was promoted to tenured associate professor and Cullen Duncan McAshan Endowed Chair in Cancer Research. Chen’s lab is focused on learning how cancer and its immune microenvironment sense and respond to stresses and therapeutic insults to evade immune surveillance and develop drug resistance. His work stimulated a Phase I trial to evaluate an IRE1 RNase inhibitor in patients with advanced solid tumors and relapsed/refractory breast cancer.
Linghua Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Cancer Genomics, Single-Cell and Spatial Biology, Tumor Microenvironment
Dr. Wang is a tenured associate professor of Genomic Medicine and co-lead of Focus Area 2 at the Institute for Data Science in Oncology. As a computational biologist and data scientist with a medical degree, Dr. Wang combines insights, intelligence, vision and drive to address fundamental questions and fuel breakthroughs in cancer research. Since joining MD Anderson, she has established a leading research program in computational biology and built a truly collaborative, team-based approach to drive innovation in basic and translational cancer research. Her group specializes in unraveling the complexities and evolution of the tumor ecosystems, focusing on cellular and molecular heterogeneity, phenotypic plasticity, dynamics and interactions during tumor initiation, progression, response and resistance to therapy. They leverage cutting-edge single-cell and spatial multi-omics technologies, high-plex cellular and molecular imaging, combined with the development and application of state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools and computational frameworks for transformative cancer discoveries. Her group consistently delivers highly innovative and influential works, and their groundbreaking research has significantly advanced the field. As an associate member of the Allison Institute, Dr. Wang collaborates closely with other researchers, continuously pushing boundaries to uncover novel insights, biomarkers, and therapeutic targets that advance predictive and precision oncology.
Assistant Members
Assistant Members are rising stars who have made impactful early contributions to the field.
Sangeeta Goswami, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Discovery Science & Immunological Principles, Clinical Trials and Translational Immunotherapy
Dr. Goswami is assistant professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology at MD Anderson. A gifted physician-scientist, Goswami both cares for patients with bladder and kidney cancers and conducts exceptional discovery and translational research that integrates the fields of epigenetics and immunology. She is leading pioneering studies focused on identifying epigenetic pathways that regulate differentiation and function of immune cell subsets. Goswami’s current research focuses on uncovering key epigenetic factors involved in primary and adaptive resistance to immunotherapy, especially myeloid cell-mediated suppressive pathways. This will guide strategies to target these factors and overcome immunotherapy resistance in tumors with high levels of myeloid cells, such as glioblastoma. She aims to design rational therapeutic combinations of epigenetic modulators and immune checkpoint inhibitors in a tumor-specific manner.
Kenneth Hu, Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Spatial Profiling, Data Science & Imaging
Dr. Hu is assistant professor of Immunology at MD Anderson. Recruited from the University of California San Francisco through a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) award, his research interests are founded in developing novel tools to push the boundaries of measurable cell states and interactions. As a graduate student, he adapted atomic force microscopy to study single-cell generated forces and mechanical properties. While a postdoctoral researcher, he developed ZipSeq, a novel technique using light-based uncaging of nucleotides to barcode cells of interest and map single-cell sequencing data back to defined regions in a tissue. His research at MD Anderson will focus on broadening the applications of this technique to study spatial tumor heterogeneity and its role in dictating responses to immunotherapy.
Adjunct Members
Adjunct Members are established scientists at outside institutions collaborating with the Allison Institute.
Garry Nolan, Ph.D.
Research Priority Area: Spatial Profiling, Data Science & Imaging
Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His research interests include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukemia, autoimmunity and inflammation, and computational approaches for network and systems immunology. His efforts are aimed at enabling a deeper understanding of normal immune function as well as detailed substructures of leukemias and solid cancers and their interactions with the immune system. Nolan’s lab developed a novel approach for single cell analysis advance using a mass spectrometry-flow cytometry hybrid device, called “CyTOF.” His collaboration with the Allison Institute will focus on a second technology developed in his lab, CODEX (CO-Detection by indEXing). This innovative in situ imaging approach allows for the simultaneous visualization of dozens of proteins and/or RNA targets in a single tumor sample. Joining his expertise with patient samples collected by MD Anderson’s immunotherapy platform will help elucidate the interactions between tumor and cells in the immune microenvironment for both primary tumors and metastases.