Megan Burger Email & Phone Number

Portland, Or, Us

Portland, Oregon, United States

Jacks Lab, Koch Institute For Integrative Cancer Research

• Discovered antigen dominance hierarchies are established during tumor development that greatly influence anti-tumor T cell function and response to checkpoint blockade and vaccine immunotherapies.• Developed a CRISPR/Cas9 system to investigate mechanisms of tumor evasion of the T cell response in a genetically engineered mouse model (GEMM) of lung cancer.• Established a new approach to investigate the role of T cell receptor binding affinity in determining anti-tumor T cell phenotypes and function in GEMMs.• Collaborated with the Santagata lab at Harvard Medical School to develop technology for spatial profiling of the anti-tumor immune response in mouse and human tissue by highly multiplexed immunofluorescence.

Winoto Lab

• Investigated the molecular mechanism of Nr4a receptor-mediated mitochondrial apoptosis during thymocyte negative selection.

Winoto Lab

• Created a transgenic mouse expressing a mutant form of Bcl-2 that inhibits multiple mechanisms of mitochondrial apoptosis in developing T cells. Found that defective negative selection in the thymus led to the development of T cell-mediated multi-organ autoimmunity and early lethality. • Identified two miRNAs upregulated during premalignancy in T cell-specific PTEN-deficient mice as a cellular response against transformation. Transgenic over-expression of these miRNAs significantly delayed development of T cell lymphomas through repression of c-myc signaling.

Eddy Lab

• Investigated the role of vascular endothelial cadherin in regulating peritubular capillary structure and function during disease progression in a mouse model of chronic kidney disease.

Cattolico Lab

• Studied light/dark cycle regulation of chloroplast DNA replication and chloroplast gene expression patterns of the unicellular brown alga, Heterosigma akashiwo. Summer research supported by the Washington Sea Grant in 2006.

University Of Washington Genome Center

• Assisted with targeted genome resequencing projects of human BRCA, CFTR, and HLA genes through the creation and screening of fosmid libraries.

Postdoc, Cancer Immunology

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Immunology

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Biochemistry