Ayantu Temesgen

Ayantu was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before moving to the US in 2013 to pursue her undergraduate studies. She received her BS/MSc degree in Biochemistry from Brandeis University, where she completed her thesis work under the supervision of Dr. Dorothee Kern. In the Kern lab, she studied the evolution and differential regulation of Src and Abl, two protein kinases that are shown to be dysregulated in various types of malignancies. After graduation, she joined the Cell Pharmacology and Translational Biology team at C4 Therapeutics (C4T) where she learned and employed various cell line engineering techniques, to study targeted protein degradation in various disease platforms. In 2019, she started her MD/PhD training at the Harvard-MIT HST Program and later started her PhD in the Harvard Immunology Program. She currently trains under the mentorship of Dr Marcia Haigis and Dr Lydia Lynch, studying the immunosuppressive effects of certain lipid metabolites on the anti- tumor immunity in High-Fat-Diet induced obesity models.