Payal Watchmaker, PhD
As a cellular immunologist, focus of my research has been to understand the influence of local tissue environment on dendritic cells (DC) -T cells crosstalk and to translate these findings into novel therapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Eugene Butcher’s laboratory, I focused on deciphering the dendritic cell network in human intestine – phenotypic and functional characterization of subsets, and defined transcriptional fingerprints for each DC subset in the human gut and correlated gene expression in human and mouse DC subsets from lymphoid and nonlymphoid sites.
My current research is focused on developing novel engineered T cell therapies for glioma immunotherapy.
Outside the lab, I enjoy reading, hiking, and traveling with my husband and twins
Email: payal.watchmaker@ucsf.edu
Ph.D. Immunology – University of Pittsburgh, in the Laboratory of Pawel Kalinski
Postdoctoral fellow – Stanford University, in the Laboratory of Eugene Butcher
Novel and shared neoantigen derived from histone 3 variant H3.3K27M mutation for glioma T cell therapy.
Zinal S. Chheda, Kohanbash G, Okada K, Jahan N, Sidney J, Pecoraro M, Yang X, Carrera DA, Downey KM, Shrivastav S, Liu S, Lin Y, Lagisetti C, Chuntova P, Watchmaker PB, Mueller S, Pollack IF, Rajalingam R, Carcaboso AM, Mann M, Sette A, Garcia KC, Hou Y, Okada H.
Journal of Experimental Medicine. 2018 Jan 2;215(1):141-157.
IDH mutations suppress STAT1 and CD8+ T-cell accumulation in gliomas.
Kohanbash G, Carrera DA, Shrivastav S, Ahn BJ, Jahan N, Mazor T, Chheda ZS, Downey KM, Watchmaker PB, Beppler C, Warta R, Amankulor NA, Herold-Mende C, Costello JF and Okada H.
J. Clin Invest 127. (4) 1425-1437 (2017).
Comparative transcriptional and functional profiling defines conserved programs of intestinal DC differentiation in humans and mice.
Watchmaker PB, Lahl K, Lee M, Baumjohann D, Morton J, Kim SJ, Zeng R, Dent A, Ansel KM, Diamond B, Hadeiba H, Butcher EC.
Nature Immunology. 2014 Jan;15(1):98108.
Independent regulation of chemokine responsiveness and cytolytic function versus CD8+ T cell expansion by dendritic cells.
Watchmaker PB, Berk E, Muthuswamy R, Mailliard RB, Urban JA, Kirkwood JM, Kalinski P.
Journal of Immunology. 2010 Jan 15;184(2):5917.
Helper function of memory CD8+ T cells: Heterologous CD8+ T cells support the induction of therapeutic cancer immunity.
Nakamura Y, Watchmaker P, Urban J, Sheridan B, Giermasz A, Nishimura F, Sasaki K, Cumberland R, Muthuswamy R, Mailliard RB et al.
Cancer Research. 2007 Oct 15;67(20):100128.