Erika L. Pearce is an American immunologist. She is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University after serving as director and a scientific member at Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany. Her work investigates the connection between metabolism and immune cell function with a particular focus on the regulation of T-cells. In 2018, she was awarded the Leibniz Prize for her "outstanding work in metabolism and inflammation research".
Pearce was born in 1972,[1] and grew up in North Fork, Long Island, New York.[2] She completed her Bachelor of Science degree at Cornell University in 1998 and earned her PhD in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005.[3] While completing her postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Pearce began her research into how cellular metabolic processes govern immune responses to infection and cancer.[4]
Career
Upon completing her postdoctoral studies, Pearce joined the Trudeau Institute in New York City from 2009 until 2011. She left the non-profit in 2011 to become an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) in St. Louis.[1] During her tenure at WashU Medicine, Pearce expanded on her earlier research into memory T cells. In 2012, her research team found that the production of additional mitochondria is triggered by Interleukin 15. She also found that genetically manipulating T cell's mitochondria could cause a higher percentage of undifferentiated T cells to become memory cells.[5] Pearce and her colleagues also found evidence that suggested cancer cells could disable T cells ability to fight off tumors and some kinds of infection. Her research team found that withholding sugar from T cells, the cells no longer produced interferon gamma.[6] In March 2014, Pearce was promoted to the rank of associate professor of pathology and immunology at WashU Medicine.[7] In her new role, Pearce received two grants to assist her research into cellular metabolism in immunity to infection. She received a grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund[8] and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.[9]
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