- Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Hajera Amatullah is an Assistant Professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, where she leads a laboratory focused on the epigenetic regulation of innate immunity in chronic inflammatory disease. She completed her PhD and postdoctoral training in immunology before joining the Penn faculty.
The Amatullah laboratory studies how chromatin regulators and epigenetic modifiers shape macrophage and innate immune cell responses in autoimmune and inflammatory disease. Her work identified loss-of-function variants in SP140 as a driver of Crohn’s disease via dysregulated innate immune programming — published in Cell — and her group continues to dissect how epigenetic machinery contributes to lupus, asthma, and other inflammatory conditions using CRISPR-based approaches and primary human cell systems.
Dr. Amatullah is a member of the Penn Colton Center and the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health, where her mechanistic work on innate immunity intersects with the Center’s broader translational autoimmunity portfolio. She partners with clinical investigators across multiple Penn divisions to bring epigenetic insights to bear on understanding and treating chronic inflammatory disease.