Leonardo M.R. Ferreira

Dr. Leonardo Ferreira obtained his PhD from Harvard University, in the laboratories of Jack Strominger and Chad Cowan. There, he worked on transcriptional regulation of immune tolerance in human pregnancy. In addition, he was the first to report successful genome editing in primary human T cells and hematopoietic stem cells using CRISPR/Cas9 and was part of a team creating universally compatible human pluripotent stem cells. As a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratories of Qizhi Tang and Jeff Bluestone at the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Ferreira redirected human regulatory T cells using chimeric antigen receptors (CAR Tregs). Currently, Dr. Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and, by courtesy, of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Hollings Cancer Center. His lab designs and develops engineered immune cell therapies for autoimmune disease, cancer, and aging.