Ellen Puré, AB, PhD

Bio:

Ellen Puré, Ph.D., is the Grace Lansing Lambert Professor and former Chair of Biomedical Sciences at the School of Veterinary Medicine, Professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine, and the founding Director of the Penn Vet Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Puré received her Baccalaureate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and her doctorate from the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School. She trained as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellow and Leukemia Society Special Fellow at the Rockefeller University where she then joined the Faculty in 1984. In 1992, Dr. Puré joined the Faculty of the Wistar Institute and was appointed Wistar Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She moved to the University of Pennsylvania as Chair of Biomedical Sciences in 2013. Dr. Puré is an Associate Director of the Cancer Research Institute and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Matrix Biology, and was a Founding Senior Editor of Cancer Immunology Research. Dr. Puré’s research focuses on the cellular and molecular basis of fibroinflammation. She studies basic mechanisms involved in fibroinflammation and its role in fibrotic diseases and cancer. Her laboratory has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the roles of stromal cells and extracellular matrix remodeling in tissue fibrosis and in cancer risk, initiation, progression, immune evasion and metastasis. Her work has established that stromal components actively dictate tumor behavior and represent powerful therapeutic targets. For example, she was instrumental in establishing Fibroblast Activation Protein (FAP) as a defining marker of cancer-associated fibroblasts and in elucidating its biological functions within the tumor microenvironment. Her laboratory provided seminal evidence that FAP expressing stromal cells orchestrate extracellular matrix remodeling, regulate inflammatory and immune responses, create an immunosuppressive niche and regulate angiogenesis, thereby promoting tumor growth while limiting effective anti-tumor immunity. These discoveries fundamentally changed our understanding of stromal biology and established stroma as one of the most important targets in oncology. Her lab is also developing novel therapeutic approaches to target stroma to treat fibrosis and cancer by enhancing the therapeutic index of other therapeutic modalities. Dr. Puré is an elected member of the European Academy for Tumor Immunology and was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2019. Dr. Puré holds several patents and was a co-founder of Capstan Therapeutics.