Connect

This is the latest installment in our Connect article series “Hope at Work” — showcasing inspiring stories about how our team members contribute to UVA Health’s 10-year strategic plan: “One Future Together Health and Hope for All.”

When she was a 28-year-old graduate student in 2011, Kristin Anderson, PhD, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. The news took everyone by surprise, including her doctors. 

Kristin underwent chemotherapy (first day, below). Three of the therapies she received were universally used, but a fourth drug was tailored for people with her breast cancer mutation (BRCA1). Surgery followed, and doctors were thrilled to discover no cancer remained — Kristin’s cancer was “super responsive” to the chemotherapy agents her doctors prescribed.  

Kristin’s husband — also a scientist — went back through National Institutes of Health records and found the research that led to the BRCA-specific drug that Kristin received was supported by a NIH-funded study in the 1970s.  

“It was really inspiring to see basic research funded by an NIH grant led to something that saved my life,” Kristin recalls.  

Pivoting Post-Cancer 

Kristin’s graduate school research focused on the type of T cells that are effective killers. She originally studied how T cells kill virus-infected cells, but after her own cancer experience, she chose to pivot into a research area focused on releasing the full cancer-killing potential of T cells.  

“I had an incredible care team, and after I finished treatment and completed my training, I wanted to pay it forward,” Kristin recalls. 

She joined the lab of Philip Greenberg, MD, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Clinical Research Division and the University of Washington, Department of Immunology. During her postdoctoral training, Kristin learned how to engineer T cells to recognize and kill cancer.  

Evading Cancer Cells’ Defenses 

Once her postdoctoral training was complete, in July 2023, Kristin (above, far right; photo by Rachel Jordan), her husband, and their three children moved from Seattle to Charlottesville. Kristin became Principal Investigator, Anderson Lab, and Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology and Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UVA School of Medicine.

Kristin’s research lab — which includes a full-time lab manager, biostatistician, two graduate students, and two post-doctoral researchers — focuses on engineering T cells that are better equipped to evade cancer cells' defenses. Ultimately, she hopes to translate her research into more effective treatments for solid tumors, like pancreatic and ovarian cancers. 

Many patients with solid tumors are diagnosed with these cancers at a late stage or develop chemotherapy-resistant disease, and then have few treatment options. The Anderson Lab’s major long-term goal is to advance therapies to address this critical gap in care. 

As Kristin explains: “When we design therapies, we don’t just want something that works, we want something that works and preserves quality of life. Our goal is to find treatments that can avoid toxicities. We want to make effective therapies that can kill the tumor but don’t inadvertently kill healthy cells in the process.” 

Patient Perspective 

The lead researcher is on a quest to find effective cancer-killing therapies, and it’s Kristin’s perspective as a cancer patient that motivates her to bring hope to life.

“A lot of people who conduct research in a lab never actually meet patients who benefit from what they’re working on," she explains. "It’s made me passionate about finding opportunities for PhD students and researchers to interface with patients and bring the patient perspective into the research realm — so we can make research better."