Dr. Richman has a longstanding interest in using T cells to target cancer. For her PhD research in the lab of Dr. Davis Kranz at the University of Illinois, she focused on engineering the alpha-beta T cell receptor (TCR) for potential therapeutic applications. There she developed a novel method for selecting high-affinity variants of antigen-specific TCRs in order to enhance recognition of tumor antigens. She also investigated TCR regions most critical for domain stability, modification of which permits expression as single-chain TCRs amenable to genetic redirection of T cells using a single polypeptide.

After completing her MD/PhD program and pediatrics residency at Columbia University Medical Center, Dr. Richman completed the Hematology-Oncology fellowship at CHOP in 2016 and is currently an instructor in the Division of Oncology. Since the second year of her fellowship, she has worked on CAR T cells in Michael Milone's lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

In Dr. Milone's lab she has focused on a preclinical model of anti-GD2 CAR T cell therapy for neuroblastoma, and her studies described severe neurotoxicity associated with a more potent version of the CAR. Informed by those findings, along with a similar pattern in other tumor models, she is focusing her current efforts in the lab on understanding how to mitigate off-tumor toxicity while maintaining high anti-tumor potency.

AB, Princeton University (Molecular Biology), 2001

PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Biochemistry), 2007

MD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010

Fellowship, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (Pediatric Hematology/Oncology), 2016

Attending Physician

Instructor of Pediatrics

Addressing toxicity in CAR-T therapy for solid tumors. St. Baldrick's Foundation, July 2017-June 2020. Role: PI