Katelyn T. Byrne

Katelyn Byrne is a Parker Fellow and Instructor in Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. She received her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Boston University, and her Ph.D. in Tumor Immunology from Dartmouth College.

Dr. Byrne's training has focused on understanding the interactions between T cells and antigen presenting cells in the context of autoimmunity and tumor immunity. As an undergraduate in Dr. Vicki Rubin Kelley's lab, Dr. Byrne studied the role of colony stimulating factor 1 in mediating nephritis in systemic lupus erythematosus. Her graduate work in Dr. Mary Jo Turk's lab focused on the role of shared tumor/self-antigens in maintaining T cell immunity to melanoma. Dr. Byrne then completed her post-doctoral training with Dr. Robert Vonderheide at the University of Pennsylvania, identifying new therapeutic combinations of agonistic CD40 antibody in a murine model of pancreatic cancer.

In 2016, Dr. Byrne was selected as a Parker Fellow from the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and transitioned to an Instructor in Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research program has focused on developing new tools to interrogate immunotherapies in pancreatic cancer, identifying novel treatment combinations, and elucidating the mechanisms by which T cells target and destruct tumor cells in immune-cold tumors.