OVERACRE LAB
harnessing immunity in cancer through innovative modulation of the microbiota
The microbiota impacts immunotherapy…but how does it work?
That’s where we come in. While we know that the gut microbiome is associated with immunotherapeutic response, but how the immune system sees and responds to these microbes to impact anti-tumor immunity is unknown. Our lab seeks to understand these basic mechanisms in hopes of applying them to novel immunotherapies in tough to treat tumors.
Dr. Abby Overacre, PhD
Dr. Overacre was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2012 from the University of Oklahoma, where she graduated cum laude. She obtained her PhD in 2018 from the University of Pittsburgh in Dario Vignali’s laboratory, where she studied regulatory T cell stability in cancer. During her PhD, she was awarded an NIH F31 Fellowship. She then conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Timothy Hand’s laboratory, where she investigated the role of the microbiota-specific T cell response in cancer. During her postdoctoral studies, she was awarded a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Dr. Overacre is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Tumor Microenvironment Center (TMC) at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. She is a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Dale F. Frey Breakthrough Scientist awardee and a recipient of the NIAID New Innovators Award (DP2). Her laboratory is centered around understanding how the microbiota and immune system interact and contribute to anti-tumor immunity and immunotherapy. Prior to this position, she published a number of seminal papers, including those published in Cell and Immunity. She is currently a member of the Society of Immunotherapy for Cancer (SITC) Early Career Scientist Committee as well as the co-chair of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Women’s Initiatives Taskforce (WIT). She is passionate about her science and supporting women and minorities in STEM.