Dr. Maus is the Paula J. O'Keeffe Endowed Chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the Director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program. She is also an Associate Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she runs a laboratory focused on developing and improving CAR T cell therapy for cancer patients while also periodically attending for the bone marrow transplant service. Dr. Maus grew up in New York, NY and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her undergraduate degree in Biology and Literature. She then earned her MD, PhD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine under the direction of her PhD mentor, Dr. Carl June. She then did a one-year postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Kathy High at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, completed her clinical training in internal medicine, hematology, and oncology as a resident at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and was a fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Dr. Michel Sadelain’s lab.

Following her extensive training, Marcela returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 to expand research efforts in the development of CAR T cells for lymphoma, myeloma, and other cancers. While there, Marcela continued her efforts on the preclinical development of CAR T cells and correlative studies of CAR T cell-related toxicities and resistance to therapies. Now, Dr. Maus runs a laboratory focused on developing and improving CAR T cell therapy for cancer patients. She has won numerous awards for her transformative research and is achieving her goal of using science to determine the best way to treat patients by harnessing the power of the immune system to solve intractable problems like cancer. She also enjoys training clinicians and scientists and watching her mentees succeed and become independent scientists and collaborators. Marcela is also a mother to three children, one large dog and one gecko. In her free time, Marcela enjoys spending time with her husband, kids, and pets, gardening, and skiing.