Rate My Professor Mayumi Fujita

Mayumi Fujita, MD, PhD, is Professor of Dermatology and Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where she also serves as Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Dermatology and Principal Investigator of the Fujita Lab. She earned her MD from Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan, in 1983, completing her initial internship and residency there in 1986. Fujita obtained her PhD in immunology from Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine in 1992. She conducted postdoctoral research in tumor biology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Following a competitive dermatology residency at the University of Washington in Seattle, completed in 2002, she joined the faculty of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as the first recruit by Department Chair David Norris, MD. She works as a physician-scientist at the CU Cancer Center and has trained more than 100 students and fellows in her laboratory over the years. Fujita was awarded tenure in the Department of Dermatology in 2015.

Fujita's research specializes in melanoma biology, melanoma immunology, and adaptive immunity, with a particular emphasis on interleukin-37 (IL-37) and its role in modulating regulatory T cells (Tregs) for applications in cancer immunotherapy and inflammatory diseases. She has authored over 120 peer-reviewed publications, including the seminal paper 'IL-37: a new player in immune tolerance' published in 2015 and recent works such as 'Downregulated ALDH2 Contributes to Tumor Progression and Poor Prognosis in Melanoma' in 2025 and 'Circulating CD8+ MAIT cells correlate with improved immunotherapy responses in melanoma patients' in 2020. As principal investigator, she holds multiple NIH grants, including RO1 (2020-2025) and R21 (2021-2024), and received a 2023 Gates Grubstake Fund award for her project 'Modified CD4+ T Cells Expressing IL-37.' Her work has advanced understanding of immune regulation in skin cancer and contributed to therapeutic strategies targeting T cell function.