Kristin DePeaux, PhD

Why did you choose the University of Pittsburgh?

I chose Pitt because of the collaborative nature of the labs and the access to state of the art facilities. I was drawn to the number of labs working on tumor immunology and the ability to perform translational research at Hillman Cancer Center. Another major factor in my decision was how eager the faculty and students are to share their expertise and help you grow as a scientist.

Education & Training

  • PhD in Microbiology & Immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 2023
  • BS in Biochemistry, Stonehill College, 2014

Research Interests

Tumor immunology; immunotherapy; regulatory T cells; oncolytic virus; T cell metabolism

Publications

DePeaux, K., & Delgoffe, G. M. (2021). Metabolic barriers to cancer immunotherapy. Nature Reviews Immunology, 21(12), 785–797.

Scharping, N. E., Rivadeneira, D. B., Menk, A. V, Vignali, P. D. A., Ford, B. R., Rittenhouse, N. L., Peralta, R., Wang, Y., Wang, Y., DePeaux, K., Poholek, A. C., & Delgoffe, G. M. (2021). Mitochondrial stress induced by continuous stimulation under hypoxia rapidly drives T cell exhaustion. Nature Immunology, 22(2), 205–215. 

Watson, M. J., Vignali, P. D. A., Mullett, S. J., Overacre-Delgoffe, A. E., Peralta, R. M., Grebinoski, S., Menk, A. V, Rittenhouse, N. L., DePeaux, K., & Whetstone, R. D. (2021). Metabolic support of tumour-infiltrating regulatory T cells by lactic acid. Nature, 591(7851), 645–651.

Zandberg, D. P., Menk, A. V, Velez, M., Normolle, D., DePeaux, K., Liu, A., Ferris, R. L., & Delgoffe, G. M. (2021). Tumor hypoxia is associated with resistance to PD-1 blockade in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer, 9(5).

Palakurthi, S., Kuraguchi, M., Zacharek, S. J., Zudaire, E., Huang, W., Bonal, D. M., Liu, J., Dhaneshwar, A., DePeaux, K., & Gowaski, M. R. (2019). The combined effect of FGFR inhibition and PD-1 blockade promotes tumor-intrinsic induction of antitumor immunity. Cancer Immunology Research, 7(9), 1457–1471.

Rivadeneira, D. B., DePeaux, K., Wang, Y., Kulkarni, A., Tabib, T., Menk, A. V, Sampath, P., Lafyatis, R., Ferris, R. L., & Sarkar, S. N. (2019). Oncolytic viruses engineered to enforce leptin expression reprogram tumor-infiltrating T cell metabolism and promote tumor clearance. Immunity, 51(3), 548–560.