When Miriam Merad arrived on Stanford University’s campus in 1997, she already had a medical degree from the University of Algiers and a master’s degree in biotechnology from the University of Paris. She came to California from France to work in Edgar Engleman’s pathology laboratory and earn a graduate degree in immunology. Merad had read a paper coauthored by Engleman and Stanford colleague Ronald Levy that described the first clinical trial of a therapeutic vaccine, derived from cancer patients’ own cells, to treat lymphoma. The cancer vaccine field was just getting started, and Merad wanted to be part of it.
She had come to Stanford with the intention of eventually returning to France to take a position in which she could see patients and do research. But her experience in Engelman’s lab made her reconsider. “It was an extraordinary time for me that changed my mind,” Merad recalls. She had ...
