Alexandra Beckett has wanted to make a difference in the lives of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases since she was 8 years old.
Beckett earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology in 2018 from the University of California, San Diego. She is interested in clinical translational research, specializing in cancer immunotherapy. She earned her master's degree from the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in May 2020.
Beckett currently works in the lab of Chris DeRenzo, MD, Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy.
“Witnessing first-hand how science is translated from bench to bedside reinforces my passion for research,” she says. “While physicians focus on treating a patient today, research is the effort of finding a treatment or cure that will save millions of lives in the next five to ten years.”
Hometown: San Diego, California
Dissertation: Disrupting the CD47/SIRPa Pathway for the Enhancement of Adoptive CAR T-Cell Therapy
Publications
Bui N, Huang J, Bojorquez-Gomez A, Licon K, Sanchez K, Tang S, Beckett AN, Wang T, Zhang W, Shen JP, Kreisberg J, Ideker T. Disruption of NSD1 in head and neck cancer promotes favorable chemotherapeutic responses linked to hypomethylation. Mol Cancer Therapeutics 17(7):1585-1594, 2018.
Shen JP, Zhao D, Sasik R, Luebeck J, Birmingham A, Bojorquez-Gomez A, Licon K, Klepper K, Pekin D, Beckett AN, Sanchez K, Thomas A, Kuo C, Du D, Roguev A, Lewis NE, Chang AN, Kreisberg JF, Krogan NJ, Qi LS, Ideker T, Mali P. Combinatorial CRISPR-Cas9 screens for de novo mapping of genetic interactions. Nat Methods 14(6): 573-576, 2017.