Keith L. Knutson

Keith L. Knutson is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Immunology at the Mayo Clinic. He received his Ph.D. degree in physiology and pharmacology from the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga, USA, in 1995, and completed two postdoctoral fellowships in immunology, one at the University of British Columbia and the other at the University of Washington. He was a 2004 recipient of a Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Knutson’s current interests and research focus on the immunology and immunotherapy of breast and ovarian cancers. His research interests are in both of the basic immunobiology and clinical translation, including clinical trials. The laboratory conducts research on cancer vaccines focusing on augmenting CD4 helper T cell immunity using peptide epitopes. These vaccine strategies are aimed at preventing the patients from relapsing after optimal conventional therapies. Adoptive T cell therapy is also being examined, a strategy that involves infusing high numbers of T cells into patients with active bulky malignancy. Work in the laboratory important to adoptive T cell therapy includes methods of T cell expansion and in vitro generation of memory T cells. Lastly, the research also aimed at understanding how tumors evade the immune system and immune therapies. A number of different mechanisms and several areas of immune escape are being investigated including cellular reprogramming (e.g., epithelial to mesenchymal transition) and recruitment of regulatory T cells and myeloid-derived suppressor cells into the tumor microenvironment. In addition to his research, Dr. Knutson participates in and chairs several study sections, and he is the Codirector of the Mayo Clinic Immune Monitoring Core and the Director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the Mayo Clinic.

Biography Updated on 4 September 2012

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