Dr. Jessica Kotov joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Oncology as an Assistant Professor as of August 2025.
Dr. Jessica Kotov’s academic trainings focused on discovering mechanisms involved in CD4+ T and B cell differentiation and function following immune encounter with bacterial or viral pathogens. In particular, she studied intracellular signaling pathways influencing cell differentiation, migration, and impact on other immune cells. Following her postdoctoral training, she joined a programmable CAR T cell therapy company where she was one of the scientific leads on a $200M partnership with Genentech involving large-scale CRISPR screens.
The goal of the in vivo and in vitro CRISPR screens was to identify novel genetic combination perturbations in CAR T cells that enhance tumor cell killing and T cell persistence. In her role as an assistant professor at WashU, she will apply her scientific expertise to engineer CAR T cells with the ability to preferentially traffic to the brain tumor site, resist T cell exhaustion to persistently kill tumor cells effectively, and withstand the harsh tumor microenvironment. Her academic and industry trainings have instilled in her a broad skillset to accomplish this goal with expertise spanning immune cell differentiation, large scale in vitro and in vivo CRISPR screening approaches, high-throughput automation, and computational analysis of single cell RNA sequencing data. An additional critical skill she acquired during her training is the experience of mentoring scientists at different stages of their careers such as graduate students and senior research associates.
In her position as assistant professor, she anticipates contributing to the teaching philosophy at WashU by identifying the unique research and career development goals of each trainee and supporting those goals while meeting the needs of the research projects within the laboratory.