Dr. Alma-Martina Cepika is an immunologist with an extensive background in human immunology, genomics, and translational research. Her goal is to understand the mechanisms governing immune tolerance, and leverage this knowledge towards developing new therapies. 

Dr. Cepika received her MD degree and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in Croatia. There, she focused on the immunomonitoring of patients with lupus, identifying how circulating DNA levels changed with therapy. For her post-doctoral fellowship, she joined the lab of Dr. Virginia Pascual at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas, Texas. There, Dr. Cepika developed a multi-pronged in vitro stimulation assay, called the Tollgene assay, to evaluate the phenotype and function of blood leukocytes in patients with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA). In combination with integrated bioinformatics analysis, this approach identified that sJIA patients have hyper-reactive monocytes, which primarily differentiate into macrophages rather than dendritic cells due to low expression of aryl hydrocarbon receptor. 

As an Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford, Dr. Cepika worked with Dr. Maria Grazia Roncarolo to investigate the biology and clinical applications of human inducible regulatory T cells (Tregs) called type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells. As well, she has spearheaded the efforts to understand the resistance of human leukemia cells to T cell killing. 

Dr. Cepika's laboratory in the Department of Surgery will continue exploring the pathogenesis of human autoinflammatory conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the biology of human Tregs in the tumor microenvironment, and the role Tregs play in resistance to cancer immunotherapy.