Shannon Turley

Biosketch

Shannon J. Turley, Ph.D. is Vice President of Immunology, Ophthalmology and Translational Immunology Research and Senior Fellow at Genentech. She previously served as Vice President of Cancer Immunology Discovery at Genentech. Before moving to industry, Dr. Turley was Associate Professor of Immunology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Ph.D. Program in Immunology at Harvard University. She earned her B.S. in Biology from the University of San Diego in San Diego, CA and her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Yale University in New Haven, CT. Following her graduate training, Shannon taught immunology and infectious disease courses for one academic year in the Department of Biology at Bowdoin College as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Dr. Turley then carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology and Immunogenetics at Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard University as a Cancer Research Institute Fellow. She joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and opened her laboratory in the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA in 2004. Dr. Turley was awarded the Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute.

Research Interests

Dr. Turley’s research focuses on stromal-immune interactions that underlie tissue and immune homeostasis, inflammatory and autoimmune pathologies, cancer, fibrosis and response to immunotherapies. Genetics, multi omics, molecular engineering, computational biology, and structural, molecular and cell biological approaches are utilized to dissect stromal cell ontogeny, differentiation and function. Chemico- and mechano-sensing associated with tissue injury, inflammation and malignancy can drive fibroblasts to adopt pathogenic states that contribute to debilitating diseases. The research mission is to understand and harness fundamental roles that fibroblasts and other cells of the mesenchymal lineage play in maintaining and compartmentalizing immune cells, organizing extracellular matrix, healing tissues and contributing to disease in order to develop transformative medicines that promote and restore human health.