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.
Super fun, (beware - stream of consciousness) conversation about learnings over 3 boom-bust cycles ...with @Jason on @TWiStartups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7cYktHhp0E
A lot of perplexing data showing chronic interferon (IFN) promotes immunotherapy resistance. But ...why is chronic IFN different from acute, which clearly is important for response? New paper by @jingya & Bihui Xu shows one reason: inflammatory memory! (1/n) https://www.nature.com/articles/s43018-022-00490-y
Congrats to my close colleague and friend @j_eyquem! This opens up so many important avenues of ...research - a sign of a great body of work.
Recent Lab News
October 2022
October is a big month for CCSF student and Roybal lab summer intern Maria Chirinos. Maria will be traveling overseas to present her work on shRNA mediated T cell activation at the SACNAS National Diversity in STEM conference in San Juan Puerto Rico. This is the largest multidisciplinary and multicultural STEM diversity event in the country, and we are so proud to have here representing the Roybal Lab! But, there’s more…she will also present at ABRCMS in Long Beach this November. Go Maria!
Septemeber 2022
It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to our dear colleague Dr. Camillia Azimi. Camillia is a founding member of the Roybal lab, and the first of our PhD students to graduate. Her work was geared towards re-engineering T cell signaling to create novel exhaustion resistant T cell therapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. Alongside Dan Goodman, she developed the CAR Pooling method: an approach that utilizes libraries of immune signaling domains and repetitive stimulations to allow for high throughput screening of CAR T treatments for persistent tumors. Camillia completed her PhD in the fall of 2022, and will begin a post doc position at Mount Sinai in 2023 working on innate immune cell engineering in the labs of Miriam Merad and Brian Brown.
August 2022
August is here and so are new rotation students! We are excited to welcome Sara Misiukiewicz and Russell Ro. Sara spent the past 2 years working at UCSF in Luke Gilbert’s lab. During that period, she used functional genomics to investigate genetic perturbations that influence cancer sensitivity/resistance to clinical DNA Damage Response inhibitors. In the Roybal lab she’ll be working with Casey and Julie on the CARD11 fusion project. Russell holds a B.S. in Bioengineering from UCSD, and is now part of the UCSF Berkeley Bioengineering PhD program. He will be working with Dan Goodman on CAR libraries.
July 2022
This summer we are lucky to receive several new members. After years of collaboration from Jaehyuk Choy’s lab at Northwestern, Jay Daniels has joined the Roybal lab as a post doc. He will be continuing his work on the CARD11 fusion project with Julie Garcia and many other lab members. Clarity Chua, who holds a B.A.S. in Biochemistry and English from UCLA, joins us from Revolution Medicines. She will be working closely with Dan Goodman to develop CAR libraries.