Bio
Crystal L Mackall MD is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor and Professor of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine at Stanford University. She is the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of Stanford Cancer Institute, Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford. During a 27 year tenure culminating as Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch, NCI, and now at Stanford (https://med.stanford.edu/mackalllab.html), she leads an internationally recognized an immuno-oncology research program that spans basic, translational and clinical research. Her work epitomizes the bench-to-bedside-to-bench iteration to create new knowledge and simultaneously develop therapeutics. Her work is credited with identifying an essential role for the thymus in human T cell regeneration and discovering IL-7 as the master regulator of T cell homeostasis. She has conducted numerous early phase and first-in-human and first-in-child clinical trials spanning dendritic cell vaccines, cytokines, and adoptive immunotherapy using NK cells and genetically modified T cells. Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia, developed a novel CD22-CAR with impressive activity in leukemia and lymphoma that has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA, and she is pioneering efforts to apply CAR T cell therapy to brain tumors. Her group has identified T cell exhaustion as a major feature limiting the activity of CAR T cells and has developed novel approaches to prevent and reverse human T cell exhaustion. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Richard V. Smalley Award highlighting her achievements in immuno-oncology, the AACR-St.Baldrick's Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research, the ASCO Pediatric Oncology Award. She a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Physicians and the AACR Academy. She serves in numerous national leadership positions, including co-PI on the NCI Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Network (U54), and co-Leader of the St. Baldrick’s-StandUp2Cancer Pediatric Dream Team. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Internal Medicine.
