The Concordia College biology department presents the annual Professor R. E. Fuglestad Memorial Lecture, “A Front Row Seat to the Destruction of Cancer: My View from the Microscope,” featuring Dr. Alex Ritter.
The presentation will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Centrum, Knutson Campus Center. It will also be livestreamed.
Ritter will discuss the army of assassins that patrol the body’s tissues to seek and destroy cancer and virus-infected cells. These specialized immune cells, called T cells, have been the focus of revolutionary new advances in cancer immunotherapy. He has spent more than a decade developing techniques to better understand how killer T cells function and how we might enhance their abilities to destroy tumors.
The 2009 Concordia graduate is a scientist and glassworker based in San Francisco. After Concordia, Ritter earned his doctorate from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) where he developed specialized microscopy techniques to film killer immune cells as they engage and destroy cancer. His work has been published in top journals, and his microscopy videos are widely used to illustrate the activities of killer T cells. He now oversees work as a senior scientist at the fast-growing biotechnology company Altos Labs.
Outside the lab, Ritter creates art using glass to sculpt 3-dimensional models of the cells he observes in the microscope. In his lecture, he’ll also review concepts in cancer immunotherapy and explore how art can be used as a medium to communicate science.
As part of Ritter’s visit, he’ll be meeting with microbiology and neurobiology students as well as Dr. Mark Jensen’s Inquiry class.
*Editor's update: Watch presentation