Juan Carlos (JC) Zúñiga-Pflücker

Juan Carlos (JC) Zúñiga-Pflücker is a Professor and former Chair (2012-2023) of the Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, and a Senior Scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute. He is a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Immunology. He received a Ph.D. in Genetics-Immunology from the George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, with his graduate studies performed at the National Cancer Institute, USA. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA. His research centers on the study of hematopoiesis, Notch signaling, thymus biology and T lymphocyte lineage commitment and differentiation, with a focus on developing model systems for the study of human T lymphocyte development from stem cells, and the generation of T cells for immune-regeneration and immune-regulatory therapies. His laboratory developed the OP9-DL system and then discovered how to generate T cells from stem cells in a stromal cell-free system. These discoveries led to co-founding Notch Therapeutics and ProTgen, Inc., for which he serves as co-chair of the scientific advisory board, and CSO, respectively. He is a Distinguish Fellow of the American Society of Immunologists and has served as Councillor, Vice-President, and President of the Canadian Society for Immunology.