ITI Postdoctoral Fellow
Seattle Children's Research Institute
Dr. Pitner earned his Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Washington with mentor Dr. David Rawlings at Seattle Children’s Research Institute by developing a B cell engineering approach to blunt the generation of antibody-derived drug inhibitors. For his postdoc, Dr. Pitner chose to remain in the Rawlings Lab to leverage the lab’s expertise in B cell gene editing and to further develop the B cell “decoy” platform he conceived with Dr. Rawlings and Dr. Richard James. In collaboration with Dr. Jane Buckner at the Benaroya Research Institute, Dr. Pitner plans to use engineered regulatory B cells as a cell therapy to treat autoimmune diseases. Dr. Pitner is excited to use his time as an ITI Fellow to gain the entrepreneurial skills needed to bring engineered cell therapies into translation.