Dhifaf Sarhan, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Division Head at Karolinska Institutet

Speaker

Following a productive postdoctoral training at the UMN, Sarhan was offered a senior postdoctoral position at Karolinska Institutet (KI) to lead the human translational research to develop cancer immunotherapies targeting tumor-associated macrophage receptor MARCO. She set up new collaborations with national and international clinicians and established in vitro and ex vivo systems for the study. This work involved developing novel antibody therapies to convert pro-tumor into anti-tumor myeloid cells that can kill the tumor cells by themselves but also by augmenting NK and T cell anti-tumor responses. In 2019 she was promoted to Assistant Professor, which enabled starting independent research team and then moved to the Department of Laboratory Medicine., Division of Pathology, KI as research group leader and currently is the Head of Pathology Division. Her mission is to tackle cancer from two directions namely, to develop therapeutic approaches that can provoke NK cell memory against tumors cells, on the other hand to target the tumor microenvironment factors to diminish the immune suppression on the cytotoxic immune cells in a gender-optimized (genderized) way.