School of Medicine
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Alma-Martina Cepika
Assistant Professor of Surgery (General Surgery)
BioDr. 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. -
Robin Cisco, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Surgery - General Surgery
BioDr. Robin Cisco is a board certified general surgeon and fellowship-trained endocrine surgeon. She specializes in surgery of the thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal glands and has expertise in lymph node dissection for thyroid cancer. Dr Cisco received her medical degree at Duke University before moving to Stanford for general surgery residency. During her residency, she completed a two-year research fellowship in surgical oncology, with a focus on cancer immunology.
After residency, she completed an endocrine surgery fellowship with the internationally recognized UCSF Division of Endocrine Surgery. She is the author of multiple publications related to endocrine surgery and surgical oncology and has an interest in minimally invasive approaches to thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal surgery. She is currently the Physician Leader of Stanford's Endocrine Oncology Cancer Care Program (CCP).
Dr. Cisco focuses on providing outstanding surgical care in an environment that is supportive of her patients and their families. She enjoys patient education and preoperative counseling, and seeks to lessen the anxiety that often comes with a recommendation for surgery. She currently sees patients both in San Jose at Stanford's Cancer Center South Bay and in Palo Alto in the Endocrine Oncology and Surgery clinic.
