McGrath is a senior scientist in translational genomics for Jounce Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Mass., pharmaceutical company co-founded by James Allison, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Using cutting-edge data-science techniques, McGrath helps to develop drugs that trigger the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Her work places her at the frontier of bioinformatics, a field that applies computer science to biological questions — and one so new that it “literally did not exist” when she was a Bucknell student.
The company’s most developed therapy, Vopratelimab, works with existing drugs to treat bladder and lung cancers. That drug is in the second of three clinical trials needed for FDA approval, and part of McGrath’s job is to use the trial results to deduce what genetic factors make patients receptive and others resistant to the therapies.
“Some immunotherapies have a curative effect, but in a lot of these cases it’s only a small proportion of the total population that can benefit from them,” she says. “What drives me is trying to figure out why the remainder of those people do not benefit, and how we can help them.” — Matt Hughes
McGrath is a senior scientist in translational genomics for Jounce Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Mass., pharmaceutical company co-founded by James Allison, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Using cutting-edge data-science techniques, McGrath helps to develop drugs that trigger the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Her work places her at the frontier of bioinformatics, a field that applies computer science to biological questions — and one so new that it “literally did not exist” when she was a Bucknell student.
The company’s most developed therapy, Vopratelimab, works with existing drugs to treat bladder and lung cancers. That drug is in the second of three clinical trials needed for FDA approval, and part of McGrath’s job is to use the trial results to deduce what genetic factors make patients receptive and others resistant to the therapies.
“Some immunotherapies have a curative effect, but in a lot of these cases it’s only a small proportion of the total population that can benefit from them,” she says. “What drives me is trying to figure out why the remainder of those people do not benefit, and how we can help them.” — Matt Hughes