Vassiliki Boussiotis MD, PhD

Vassiliki Boussiotis, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Attending Physician in the Department of Hematology-Oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. She received her MD and PhD from the University of Athens, Greece. Dr. Boussiotis joined the Division of Tumor Immunology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School in 1991, where she completed her postdoctoral training in Dr. Lee Nadler’s laboratory, which at that time was generating ground breaking knowledge that changed the route of Immunology: the discovery of the B7 family of costimulatory molecules. Her first postdoctoral project revealed that additional B7 molecules exist and led to the cloning of the second member of the B7 family (B7-2; CD86). Subsequently, her research group has been investigating mechanisms and signaling pathways involved in the regulation of activating and inhibitory T cell responses. Her laboratory was among the first to determine that induction of T cell tolerance results from active signaling processes, and also had an active role in the identification of PD- L1 and PD-L2 as ligands for PD-1. Her ongoing work involves the understanding of PD-1 effects on TCR-mediated activation at the molecular and biochemical and the effects of checkpoint inhibitors on immunometabolism. She has published more than 120 research articles, book chapters and reviews. Dr. Boussiotis is a board-certified oncologist and works on hematologic malignancies and bone marrow transplantation. Her group is part of the hematopoietic stem cell transplantation research team at the Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center (DFHCC) and has conducted several translational studies on the mechanisms of immune reconstitution after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The ultimate goal of her laboratory is to translate research findings into novel approaches for induction of anti-tumor immunity, prevention of graft versus host disease and improvement of immune reconstitution after allogeneic transplantation.