--- title: "Shanmugam Family Fund for Autoimmune Disease Research FY27" canonical: "/Shanmugam-Family-Fund-FY27" published: 2026-09-30 --- # Shanmugam Family Fund for Autoimmune Disease Research FY27 ## Frame **Lauren Milling, PhD** **Letter from the Dean** **Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD** **Ruth Franklin, PhD** **Ruaidhrí Jackson** **Naomi Goldman, PhD** ## Secure Hub ### Shanmugam Family Fund for Autoimmune Disease Research ###### September 2026 ##### at Harvard Medical School **Letter** ## Frame September 24, 2026 Dear Kannon and Vicki, Thank you for your generosity in establishing the Shanmugam Family Fund for Autoimmune Disease Research at Harvard Medical School. Your support will advance autoimmune research for years to come and help early-career Harvard immunologists pursue innovative ideas that could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. I’m pleased to share this report, which highlights select faculty and staff of the HMS Department of Immunology and their research, including the pioneering work of Dr. Arlene Sharpe, whose discoveries about immune checkpoint pathways laid the foundation for a transformative approach to cancer treatment. Philanthropy has long played a crucial role in advancing research into understudied questions, rare diseases, and early-stage ideas. Your generosity helps our scientists, like Dr. Sharpe and her team, translate breakthroughs in basic science into transformative new therapies and will help to improve the health of individuals and communities while advancing scientific discovery. I am deeply grateful for your support of this critical research. I also hope you enjoy getting to know our immunology faculty and other members of the Harvard community during your fall campus visit. Thank you again, Kannon and Vicki, for your generosity and for the many ways you support the University. I look forward to staying connected and to seeing you at a future campus or Corporation event. I also hope your son’s first year is going smoothly! ###### George Q. Daley, MD, PhD Sincerely, George Q. Daley, MD, PhD Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine **Arlene Sharpe** ## Frame ##### Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD Every day, you can feel the energy that comes from scientists across disciplines working together and sharing ideas. The proximity of so many talented colleagues sparks creative collaborations and accelerates the pace of discovery. Arlene Sharpe, MD ’82, PhD ’81, Kolokotrones University Professor Chair, Department of Immunology, HMS Vice Director, Gene Lay Institute Arlene Sharpe earned her MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her laboratory discovered and elucidated the functions of T-cell costimulatory pathways, including the immunoinhibitory functions of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways, laying the foundation for immune checkpoint blockade therapy in cancer. Today, her laboratory investigates the roles of T-cell costimulatory pathways in regulating T-cell tolerance and in antimicrobial and antitumor immunity. Dr. Sharpe and her colleagues continue to translate their groundbreaking discoveries into novel therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer. One of the world’s most highly cited researchers, Dr. Sharpe has published more than 400 papers and has received numerous awards and prizes. Most recently, she won the 2025 Excellence in Immunology Award from the International Union of Immunological Societies and became, alongside her husband—fellow HMS professor and immunotherapy pioneer Gordon Freeman, PhD ’79—the inaugural recipient of the Gretener-Thürlemann Prize from the University of Zurich. **Read more** ##### CHIME CHIME (CHimeric IMmune Editing) is a CRISPR-Cas9-based delivery system that enables the knockout of a wide variety of immune-related genes without altering immune-cell development or function. Dr. Sharpe uses this powerful system to identify and validate regulators of immune response and resistance to antitumor immunity. She and her team believe CHIME will allow the discovery and mechanistic dissection of targets that synergize with immune checkpoint blockade. In addition to developing the system’s target-identification capabilities, they are building new in vivo perturbation technologies to enable the mechanistic dissection of novel targets using CRISPR. Diagram illustrating the process of using Cas9 stem cells to study immune responses in a tumor model. ##### Collaboration with Smith Lab for Genetic and Cellular Engineering Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies have proven effective against hematologic malignancies, but solid tumors remain largely unresponsive to CAR T-cell treatment. To address this challenge, Dr. Sharpe is working to identify and prioritize genetic targets to enhance CAR T-cell efficacy in advanced solid-tumor models. Using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, she and her team are genetically engineering CAR T cells developed in the Smith lab to target TROP2, a cell-surface protein. TROP2 is a promising antigen target for the treatment of solid tumors because of its widespread surface expression across many solid tumor types, including breast, bladder, and lung cancers. To improve the efficacy of this approach in controlling large, solid tumors, Dr. Sharpe and her colleagues are combining CAR T-cell therapy with the genetic knockout of novel negative regulators of T-cell abundance. The success of this project will extend the effective reach of cancer immunotherapy to an entirely new class of cancers. A greater understanding of T-cell function and inhibitory pathways in the immune system will also improve the lab’s understanding of autoimmune disease. **Inline Asset** Video: Making Medicine: Cancer Immunotherapies **Ruaidhri Jakson** **Ruth Franklin** ## Frame #### Getting to Know the Sharpe Lab ## Frame #### Ruaidhrí Jackson #### Associate Professor, Immunology #### Ruth Franklin, PhD #### Associate Professor, Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Ruaidhrí Jackson earned his PhD in immunology from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he studied the molecular mechanisms of E3 ubiquitin ligases under the mentorship of Professor Paul Moynagh. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University in the laboratory of Dr. Richard A. Flavell, investigating innate mucosal immunity, intestinal pathology, and noncanonical RNA translation. In October 2019, he joined the department of immunology at Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor. Dr. Jackson’s lab focuses on understanding how the body’s mucosal barriers—such as those lining the lungs and digestive tract—maintain healthy relationships with the microbes that live there while preventing infection and harmful inflammation. Using genomic, genetic, and cellular approaches, he and his team investigate how previously unknown proteins, mechanical signals, and communication among immune cells, epithelial cells, and neurons regulate these defenses.By uncovering how these systems work together—and what causes them to break down—this research may reveal new strategies for preventing and treating infections, inflammatory diseases, and fibrosis. A central theme of the lab’s work is identifying the molecular and cellular pathways that preserve tissue-wide balance and protect the body’s vulnerable mucosal surfaces. **Inline Asset** Video:How Two Harvard Medical School Labs Collaborate to Push Research Forward Two former Yale postdocs are now working side‑by‑side at Harvard Medical School to solve difficult questions in medicine. Ruth Franklin, assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, studies how the immune system works to promote lung repair and prevent diseases such as cancer and fibrosis. RuaidhríJackson, assistant professor of immunology, is discovering new proteins that could provide more insight into cancer, autoimmunity, and infection biology. They lead neighboring labs that trade ideas, samples, and support to move science faster, and ultimately, inform new treatments. Ruth Franklin received her BA in biology, with a minor in sociology, from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She earned her PhD in immunology and microbial pathogenesis from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, where she conducted her thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Ming Li at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. There, she characterized the lineage and function of tumor-associated macrophages in the development and progression of breast cancer. She subsequently joined the laboratory of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov at Yale School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow, where she continued investigating macrophage biology. Her work demonstrated that tissue-cell composition can be regulated through the reciprocal exchange of growth factors and identified several macrophage-secreted factors produced in response to stress. As an associate professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, with appointments in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Franklin studies how immune cells contribute to tissue building, remodeling, and repair in the context of injury, infection, and cancer. Her laboratory focuses on macrophage biology, disease tolerance, and neuroimmune interactions to understand how dysregulated immune communication drives disease. **Naomi Goldman** ## Frame #### Naomi Goldman, PhD #### Postdoctoral Fellow Naomi Goldman, PhD Naomi Goldman earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked under Dr. Golnaz Vahedi to study epigenetic and transcriptional regulation in T-cell development and function. Her thesis focused on identifying an intrinsically disordered domain of the transcription factor TCF-1 that was required for DNA binding and fidelity to the T-cell lineage. In the Sharpe lab, Naomi focuses on the role of co-inhibitory receptors in regulating the durability of T-cell states in autoimmunity and cancer. She hopes to assess the interplay between metabolism and epigenetics in modulating immune responses. **Lauren Milling** ## Frame #### Lauren Milling, PhD #### Research Scientist Lauren Milling studied biological engineering at MIT, earning her PhD under the mentorship of Dr. Darrell Irvine. Her thesis focused on the intratumoral administration of innate immune agonists for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer; she also designed materials strategies to improve the safety of such therapies. In the Sharpe lab, Lauren is one of the principal researchers assigned to the CHIME project. She performs in vivo T-cell screens to identify novel regulators of anti-tumor immunity and has been the first author of several of the lab’s recent publications. Lauren Milling, PhD ## Frame ###### Office of Alumni Affairs and Development ###### 25 Shattuck Street Boston, MA 02115