Q&A with Kaitlyn Pierpont: Combining Immunotherapy and Chemotherapy for Better Cancer Treatment
July 20, 2026Kaitlyn Pierpont, a PhD student at Weill Cornell Medicine, is researching how to improve cancer treatment by combining two therapies: chemotherapy and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
Kaitlyn Pierpont was completely fascinated while learning about infectious diseases and the development of vaccines as a child. “I vividly remember being super excited to present to my sixth-grade history class about the smallpox pandemic and the creation of the first vaccine,” Pierpont recalls.
At the time, she never imagined she would live through a pandemic herself while training to become a scientist. But the COVID-19 pandemic solidified Pierpont’s interest in the immune system and its potential for treating disease.
Now a PhD student at Weill Cornell Medicine, Pierpont received a 2026 PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery for her research exploring new ways to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Her research seeks to combine two cancer treatments: chemotherapy and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
Traditional chemotherapy kills cancer cells but also healthy cells, leading to harmful side effects for patients. CAR T-cell therapy reprograms a patient’s own immune cells to find and kill cancer cells. Pierpont is designing new CAR T cells that act as cellular “pharmacies,” dispensing chemotherapy drugs directly at the tumor site, thus preventing the harmful side effects of traditional chemotherapy.
Watch this video to learn more about Pierpont and her research.
