Shari Pilon-Thomas, PhD is a Senior Member of the Immunology Department at Moffitt Cancer Center. She is currently the Scientific Director of the Developmental TIL Lab and Co-Director of the Center for Immunization and Infection Research in Cancer (CIIRC). She received her PhD in Immunology/Microbiology from Wayne State University and completed her Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Surgery, Tumor Immunology, Immunotherapy from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on the advancement of immunotherapy, specifically vaccine-based approaches and adoptive T cell therapy for a wide variety of solid tumors.
Dr. Pilon-Thomas founded and continues to lead the premier research program that bridges basic science and clinical immunotherapy trials for patients with solid tumors at Moffitt Cancer Center. She has spearheaded the optimization of TIL expansion protocols for a wide array of solid tumors and is the central collaborator for the subsequent translation of TIL therapy in solid tumors. She leads a basic science immunology lab which develops immunotherapeutic treatment strategies in murine models and collaborates with clinicians to develop clinical trial protocols based on her laboratory research. Her collaborations have resulted in TIL-based trials for patients with melanoma, sarcoma, bladder cancer, H&N squamous cell carcinoma, and cervical cancer. She also leads the Developmental TIL Lab which performs the immune monitoring on these trials, including the measurement of suppressive factors and tumor-specific immune responses; the results of which inform subsequent trial design. She currently serves as the Co-Chair of the SITC Cell Therapy Committee and is an active member of the SITC regulatory committee.