Overview

Gender

male

Alex Marson is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Microbiology and Immunology, where he leads research at the Marson Lab. The Marson Lab is programming in a cutting-edge coding language: DNA. Marson’s team is pioneering new CRISPR gene editing technologies that offer faster, cheaper and more precise ways to re-write DNA programs in human immune cells. With these tools, the lab is engineering cells to treat a wide range of diseases. They are designing programs to make cells that can recognize and eliminate cancer, cells that are resistant to infections like HIV, and cells that can reduce inflammation in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. Reprogrammed human immune cells are emerging as a new class of “living” medicines. Marson attended college and medical school at Harvard. He received a master’s degree in Biological Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in Biology from MIT. Marson was a resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and completed clinical training in Infectious Diseases at UCSF. He started his lab as a UCSF Sandler Faculty Fellow in 2013. Marson is the scientific director for biomedicine at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI). He is a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and was selected as one of the inaugural Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigators.