Tullia Bruno, PhD

Assistant Professor of Immunology • UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and University of Pittsburgh

Tullia C. Bruno, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and a faculty member in the Tumor Microenvironment Center and the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. She obtained her PhD in immunology from Johns Hopkins in 2010 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado in 2015 — both with a focus in tumor immunology. While Dr. Bruno’s PhD training focused on inhibitory receptors on intratumoral T cells, she became interested in the role of B cells and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) in the tumor microenvironment (TME) during her postdoctoral fellowship and has built her independent research program around understanding intratumoral B cell and TLS function in multiple human cancers.

Dr. Bruno’s research lab has an overt focus on studying immunity within cancer patients, which makes her research highly translational with the potential for future clinical trials targeting B cells. Thus, Dr. Bruno’s overall research objective is to develop a B cell-specific immunotherapy in the next five to 10 years. Dr. Bruno is actively involved in the UPMC Hillman community and is an advocate for women in science, as is evidenced by her current role as chair of the UPMC Hillman Women’s Initiatives Taskforce and her contributions to the Society of Immunotherapy’s Women in Immunotherapy group.