Our Research
In the Roybal Lab, we harness the tools of synthetic and chemical biology to enhance the therapeutic potential of engineered immune cells. We take a comprehensive approach to cellular engineering by developing new synthetic receptors, signal transduction cascades, and cellular response programs to enhance the safety and effectiveness of adoptive cell therapies. We also study the logic of natural cellular signaling systems, and the underlying principles of cellular communication and collective cell behavior during an immune response. These interests are complementary as cell engineering is often informed by knowledge obtained from studying natural mechanisms of cell regulation refined by evolution.
Our Partners
Our People
The Roybal Lab is a dedicated group of students, post-docs, physicians, and staff scientists with diverse backgrounds ranging from basic science to cellular engineering and synthetic immunology. Each member brings expertise in their field to our unique and highly collaborative research environment.
News
Media highlights of Roybal Lab's research.
Stay Updated
Keep up-to-date with the latest research from the Roybal lab.
Congrats, Mo! Lucky to have you as a colleague and friend!
This is a great opportunity to work in my lab on the future of cell therapy design, esp if you ...interested in getting more research experience in cell therapy and genome engineering prior in medical or graduate school. Please check it out & share with anyone who may be interested.
I'm extremely grateful to be awarded the @CancerResearch Institute STAR Award. This grant will ...allow my group to rapidly pursue the development of exciting new immune cell therapeutics with broad implications for cancer. https://www.cancerresearch.org/news/2022/cri-names-newest-class-of-stars-2022
Recent Lab News
June 2022
In the early days of the pandemic, while most of us were just trying to avoid getting sick, Casey Burnett spent her time profiling immune cells of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Her work was published this June in Immunity. Truly an impressive paper made even more so by the conditions under which the data was collected. Outstanding work Casey!
May 2022
After completing his rotation, Ph.D. Student Max Foisey has officially joined the Roybal Lab. Congratulations Max, we are excited to have you!
April 2022
The Roybal lab is looking for Postdocs and Staff Scientist to join our team! We are starting a number of new and exciting synthetic biology and cell therapy projects that you can be a part of. Things are moving fast, please get in touch with us by emailing your CV, including references and a brief statement of interest.
March 2022
We are excited to share our latest paper published in Cell! Congratulations to Ray Liu and Iowis Zhu for leading the development of clinically optimized and tunable nextgen synNotch receptors (dubbed SNIPRs) for cell therapies. This was a major effort involving many members of lab including Julie, Axel, Dan P., and Josef.