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Heather MacGregor

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

I became interested in the constant power struggle between a cancer and a person's immune system during undergrad. I am currently working on my PhD focusing on how the immune system responds to ovarian cancer. Learning more about how cancer turns off the immune system will help us develop treatments that help the immune system recognize and kill cancer cells.

Because of recent successes and the exciting possibilities of immunotherapy, the cancer immunology field is frequently getting media attention. Unfortunately, the impact of the research being reported on sometimes gets obscured by sensationalism, causing people to be confused about what the results really mean. My interest in clearly communicating the exciting developments in my field lead to me to start writing about science for people who aren't experts in the field.

Experience

  • 2019–present
    Postdoctoral fellow, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
  • 2011–2019
    PhD Candidate in Cancer Immunology, University of Toronto
  • 2004–2010
    Honours BSc in Biology, University of Victoria

Publications

  • 2019
    High expression of B7-H3 on stromal cells defines tumor and stromal compartments in epithelial ovarian cancer and is associated with limited immune activation, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer
  • 2019
    Tumor cell expression of B7-H4 correlates with higher frequencies of tumor-infiltrating APCs and higher CXCL17 expression in human epithelial ovarian cancer, OncoImmunology
  • 2017
    Molecular Pathways: Evaluating the Potential for B7-H4 as an Immunoregulatory Target, Clinical Cancer Research