Arlene Sharpe

Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD is the George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology and Chair of the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and Co-Director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Sharpe is co-leader of MassCPR (Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness), established in March 2020 by Harvard Medical School to respond to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and prepare for emerging pathogens of the future.

Dr. Sharpe earned her AB from Harvard University and her MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School. She completed residency training in Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is board certified in Anatomic Pathology. Dr. Sharpe served as a member and chair of the NIH Hypersensitivity, Autoimmunity, and Immune-mediated diseases (HAI) study section and as a member of the NIAID Council.

Dr. Sharpe served as President of the American Association of Immunologists from 2016-2017. She is a leader in the field of T cell costimulation. Her laboratory has discovered and elucidated the functions of T cell costimulatory pathways, including the immunoinhibitory functions of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways, which have become exceptionally promising targets for cancer immunotherapy. Her laboratory currently focuses on the roles of T cell costimulatory pathways in regulating T cell tolerance, effective antimicrobial and antitumor immunity, and translating fundamental understanding of T cell costimulation into new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Dr. Sharpe has published over 300 papers and was listed by Thomas Reuters as one of the most Highly Cited Researchers (top 1%) in 2014-2018 and a 2016 Citation Laureate. She received the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor immunology in 2014, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize in 2017 for her contributions to the discovery of PD-1 pathway, and the SITC Smalley Award in 2020. Dr. Sharpe is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.