Arlene Sharpe

Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD is the George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard and MIT. She is one of the world's preeminent authorities on T cell coinhibitory pathways and was instrumental in defining the biology of the PD-1/PD-L1 and PD-1/PD-L2 axes through genetic, biochemical, and in vivo approaches. Her laboratory generated some of the earliest PD-L1 and PD-L2 knockout and transgenic mouse models, which were essential tools in establishing the non-redundant roles of each ligand in peripheral tolerance, infection, and tumor immunity. Dr. Sharpe has made fundamental contributions to understanding how PD-1, CTLA-4, Tim-3, LAG-3, TIGIT, and other coinhibitory receptors integrate during T cell exhaustion in the tumor microenvironment and during chronic viral infection — work that has directly informed the design of next-generation combination checkpoint inhibitor trials. Collaborating closely with Gordon Freeman and others, she co-discovered the biology of PD-L2 and helped define how the tumor microenvironment selectively upregulates coinhibitory ligands to suppress antitumor immunity. She has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and has trained dozens of leading immunologists. Dr. Sharpe is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.