Dr. Vignali, is a co-Founder of Novasenta. Dr. Vignali is also the Frank Dixon Chair in Cancer Immunology, a Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of the Immunology Department at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is also Associate Director for Scientific Strategy, co-leader of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and co-director of the Tumor Microenvironment Center in the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. His research focuses on molecular and cellular aspects of negative regulatory immune mechanisms including regulatory T cells, inhibitory receptors, and inhibitory cytokines. His lab was instrumental in uncovering the role of LAG3 in mouse models of cancer, tolerance, autoimmunity and immune regulation. His lab discovered the inhibitory cytokine IL35 and the NRP1:SEMA4A axis, which are key regulators of intratumoral Treg stability and function.
His current research extensively uses systems immunology approaches to understand transcriptional regulation of effector T cell exhaustion and regulatory T cell function and fate in murine models of cancer and autoimmunity, and numerous human tumors. He has been a Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% by citations; Clarivate Analytics) for the last five years (2016-2020) and has published over 200 papers with over 38 as senior or co-author in high impact journals (IF>10). He has a strong record of extramural funding, which currently includes an NIH P01, R35 and three R01 grants. He is Director of the Cancer Immunology Training Program (NCI T32), and has trained, or currently training, 50 postdoctoral research or clinical fellows and 14 graduate students, with several successfully obtaining extramural fellowships (14 total), emphasizing his commitment to train the next generation of immunologists.
Dr. Vignali’s innovative, discovery-based research has led to 15 patent awards (11 in the US) and 11 pending patent applications worldwide, and he is a co-founding scientist of several companies including Potenza Therapeutics [sold to Astellas] and Tizona Therapeutics [sold to Gilead]).