Dario A. Vignali

Dr. Dario A. Vignali is the Frank Dixon Chair in Cancer Immunology, Vice Chair and Professor of Immunology in the Immunology Department, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is also Leader of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and co-Director of the Tumor Microenvironment Center in the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. His research focuses on molecular and cellular aspects of negative regulatory immune mechanisms including regulatory T cells, inhibitory receptors, and inhibitory cytokines. His lab was instrumental in uncovering the role of Lag3 in mouse models of cancer, tolerance, autoimmunity and immune regulation.

Dr. Vignali’s lab discovered the inhibitory cytokine IL35 and the Nrp1:Sema4a axis, which are key regulators of intratumoral Treg stability and function. His current research also uses extensive use of transcriptional analysis, especially using single cell RNAseq. The majority of his work focuses on analysis of these pathways in murine models of cancer and numerous human tumors.

Dario also studies regulatory mechanisms in autoimmunity and type 1 diabetes. He has published more than 170 papers with over 33 as senior or co-author in high impact journals, including Nature, Cell, Science, Nature Immunology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Immunity, Science Immunology and EMBO.