Jessica Stark, PhD

Research Summary

New paradigms to harness the immune system are necessary to address unmet needs in human health. Sugars called glycans coat the surface of every cell and, as a result, influence nearly every immunological process. However, our ability to identify which glycans control immune responses and design therapies to target them remains limited. The Stark Lab is pioneering approaches to understand and engineer the roles of glycans in the immune system in order to 1) fill key knowledge gaps in immunobiology and 2) develop next-generation immunotherapies. Our work is highly interdisciplinary, integrating approaches from molecular, synthetic, and systems biology, immunology, and biological engineering. We are interested in fundamental questions and therapeutic applications in multiple contexts, including cancer, autoimmunity, and infection.

Our lab is further committed to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM through mentoring, outreach, and educational innovation. To support this work, we co-developed and commercialized BioBits® educational kits that promise to increase access to high-quality biology education by facilitating hands-on learning.

Biography

Jessica Stark, PhD is an assistant professor in the departments of Biological Engineering and Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received her BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Cornell University. After graduation, she worked at Genentech, Inc. in process development and research and development roles. She then went on to complete her PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering with Michael Jewett at Northwestern University. There, she developed cell-free technologies for protein therapeutic and vaccine production that promise to enable portable and personalized medicine. As a postdoctoral fellow with Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford University, her work focused on identifying and targeting glycans that act as immune checkpoints for next-generation cancer immunotherapy. The Stark Lab is developing biological technologies to realize the largely untapped potential of glycans for immunological discovery and immunotherapy. She is a co-founder of Valora Therapeutics.

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