Sumana Sharma

My research focuses on how T cells signal and how these pathways can be precisely manipulated to engineer designer immune phenotypes.

I completed my PhD in Prof. Gavin Wright’s lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, where I developed a genetic screening approach using CRISPR to identify receptor-ligand interactions on the cell surface. I then joined Evangelia Petsalaki’s group at EMBL-EBI for a computational postdoc, where I conceived a computational analysis tool (“CEN-tools”) using publicly available CRISPR essentiality datasets to define core and context-dependent genes in cancer. I subsequently moved to the MRC-TIDU as a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Simon Davis’ T Cell Biology group, where I developed genetic screening approaches to study signaling in T cells.

In 2025, I was awarded a Wellcome Career Development Award to start my group at MRC-TIDU, focused on developing new strategies for next-generation T cell immunotherapies. Our team is particularly interested in inhibitory receptor signaling in T cells and how it can be rewired to overcome immune suppression and enhance therapeutic efficacy. We use a multidisciplinary approach that combines omics technologies, CRISPR-based functional genomics, computational analysis, and primary T cell editing to uncover and exploit key regulatory mechanisms.