Barbara Kee

Dr. Barbara Kee is a Professor at the University of Chicago, where she is Chair of the Committee on Cancer Biology and an active member of the Committee on Immunology. Her research focuses on the transcriptional programs that promote the development and function of innate immune cells, including natural killer (NK) cells, NK T cells, and CD8 T lymphocytes. In the area of NK cell biology, prior studies from Dr. Kee’s lab have shown a requirement for the transcriptional repressor Id2 in the differentiation of NK cells and their acquisition of a “memory-like” genomic and transcriptomic state. Her lab showed that the function of ID2 is to limit the ability of the E protein transcription factors to promote expression of Tcf7, encoding the transcription factor TCF1, a key regulator of the naïve T cell gene program. More recently, Dr. Kee’s lab has focused on the role of the Ets1 transcription factor, a known suppressor of autoimmune disease, in NK cell maturation and functional activity.