Georgia Lattanzi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She explores the immune system's role in cancer, specifically how B cell lymphocytes can be harnessed to identify and target tumor cells. In this Postdoc Portrait interview, she shares how she aims to design novel immunotherapies that promote curative therapeutic responses and prevent recurrence.
Uncovering B Cell Mechanisms in Cancer Immunotherapy
Q | How did you first get interested in science?
I have always been a very curious child. I was always doing “experiments” at the beach, in my house garden, or in my parents’ kitchen—they weren’t happy about that, but they just couldn’t stop me. Observation, questioning, reasoning and deduction are distinct characteristics of my personality, which are also the pillars of Galileo’s scientific method. So, I guess I can be considered a scientist since ever. I would spend hours, days, months in the house garden observing how plants grew, seeds sprouted, flowers flourished and died, and how these phenomena would repeat themselves in a perfectly synchronized manner. Growing up I studied biological and medical sciences, and soon after I started studying the immune system, I realized it was my real scientific passion. At first, and actually still now, I was impressed by the ability of the immune system to maintain an internal balance by protecting its host, fighting infections, and instructing tolerance. Also, it’s incredibly interesting to understand how the immune system succeeds in maintaining this balance, and what happens when things go wrong.
Q | What scientific problem are you trying to solve?
I love to understand what happens when things go wrong. My research has been focused on studying different immune responses in health and disease. I investigate how the immune system promotes tolerant and healthy environments—shout-out to the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—but also how it behaves in pathological conditions such as autoimmune diseases and cancer. Right now, I am working on an exciting project investigating the role of a specific population of immune cells in cancer, the B cell lymphocytes. B cells are known to protect us from pathogens by producing antibodies that target and clear them. Importantly, B cells also generate memory and thus protect us from secondary infections. Since B cells are so efficient in identifying, targeting and remembering pathogens I want to test if they can do the same toward tumor cells. Immunologist Daniel Hollern’s group has shown that B cells do have an important anti-tumorigenic role and promote curative therapeutic responses in highly mutated tumors. I’m now dissecting how and through which mechanisms B cells can direct these curative responses, so that we can design novel immunotherapies that promote effective responses and limit tumor recurrence.
The Rewards of Translational Discovery and Flow Cytometry
Q | What has been a meaningful part of your research journey?
Any solid step forward in science is extremely rewarding. A good scientist is skeptical, challenges themselves a lot, doesn’t immediately believe in their findings, and keeps testing the truthfulness of the hypothesis with different experimental approaches. I believe that you must test and re-test a hypothesis by approaching it from different angles. Biology is not black or white, and you often collect data and results that might be in the middle, which is why you need more and more evidence to believe your hypothesis. But that moment in which you truly believe in your findings, because you have demonstrated them in every possible way, is extremely rewarding. Being the only person that has that knowledge feels great. But sharing that knowledge with the scientific community, and the idea that your findings might be essential to generate new therapies or scientific advances, the feeling of being a real change-maker for people’s lives, feels even greater. In my career, I have conducted a lot of translational research and have had direct contact with patients. Their trust, belief, and hope in science are the most rewarding feelings ever.
Q | If you could be a laboratory instrument, which one would you be and why?
I would absolutely be a flow cytometer! Flow cytometers are instruments that enable the study, characterization, and identification of immune cells. They are a sophisticated instrument, made of different components. They exploit the physics of fluid and mirror reflections and wavelength excitation and emissions to carefully dissect the protein cell contents at a single-cell level. Each cell is passed through different lasers which have unique wavelengths that will excite the fluorophores attached to the antibodies. If the fluorescently labeled antibodies are bound to the cell, they will emit shorter wavelengths that are directed by mirrors to electric detectors and analyzer that will identify the signal. There are cytometers that can collect up to 49 different signals. This means you can characterize up to 49 different features and proteins of your cells at a single level. Incredible!
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
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