Saba Alzabin, PhD

Dr. Saba Alzabin is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Oncological Sciences in the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai. She received her Ph.D. from New York University in Molecular Oncology and Immunology. Her doctoral thesis was instrumental in deciphering the immunosuppressive function of Hematopoietic Progenitor Kinase 1 (HPK1), also known as MAP4K1, in T cells, dendritic cells and cancer. Her body of work has resulted in several industrial efforts to assess MAP4K1 as a cancer immuno-therapeutic target. Following her doctorate, Saba completed her postdoctoral training at The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford where she identified Interleukin 17 as a biomarker of non-responders to anti-TNF alpha biologics in inflammatory arthritides, further validating the potential of combination biologic therapy in pre-clinical settings. Saba’s subsequent work assessed the role of endosomal Toll-like receptors in arthritis, as well infectious triggers of autoimmune disease. Dr. Alzabin spent a significant part of her career in industry where she was responsible for the establishment of pre-clinical and early clinical programmes to assess novel therapeutics of autoimmune disease and immuno-oncology. She has held visiting and Adjunct positions at the University of Manchester in the UK and Mount Sinai School of Medicine before joining as full-term faculty in 2022 to translate her early findings on HPK1 as a senior member of a multi-disciplinary team discovering and advancing oral HPK1 protein degraders for cancer. Dr. Alzabin’s appointment will also aid in further understanding the role of this immune suppressive factor in other arms of the immune system.