Arlene Sharpe

Arlene Sharpe

Kolokotrones University Professor
Chair, Department of Immunology
Director, Mouse Engineering Core
Arlene Sharpe

Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD is the Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University 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, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and Vice Director of the Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sharpe earned her MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is a leader in T cell costimulation. Her laboratory has discovered and elucidated functions of T cell costimulatory pathways, including immunoinhibitory functions of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways, that has laid the foundation for immune checkpoint blockade therapy in cancer. Her laboratory investigates roles of T cell costimulatory pathways in regulating T cell tolerance, antimicrobial and antitumor immunity, and translating this understanding into therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Dr. Sharpe has published over 400 papers and was listed by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate as one of the most Highly Cited Researchers (top 1%) in 2014-2023 and a 2016 Citation Laureate. She received the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor immunology in 2014, Warren Alpert Foundation Prize in 2017, SITC Smalley Award in 2020, and Switzer Prize in 2023. In 2022, she received the FASEB Excellence in Science Lifetime Achievement Award, AAI Lifetime Achievement Award, and Rous-Whipple Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology. She 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, National Academy of Inventors, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer and the American Association of Immunologists.

Contact Information

Harvard Medical School
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, NRB 837
Boston, MA 02115