Dr. Lisa Forbes is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Section of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.  She is also the Medical Director for the Texas Children’s Center for Human Immunobiology. 

Dr. Forbes specializes in treating patients with inherited and acquired immune system disorders, specifically primary immunodeficiency diseases and lymphoproliferative disorders.  She is involved in the state Newborn screening program for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) as well as the Houston project, an initiative to understand immune system diseases through identification of genetic causes.   Dr. Forbes is active in the Pediatric Immune Deficiency Transplant Consortium, for the Baylor clinical site is a founding member of this first multicenter National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported clinical trials group for immunoreconstitution of SCID children.  With hematology/oncology colleagues, our clinical site transplants 15-20 SCID patients per year with hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow, peripheral blood, and cord blood with a survival rate of 100% for matched relative transplants and 70-85% survival rate for other donor transplants.

She is trained in Allergic disorders as well and has experience treating patients with Asthma, Allergic Rhinitis, eczema and food allergy.

Dr. Forbes’ research interest is in Natural Killer Cells disorders and the signaling mechanisms of the immune system.  She has a research program that utilizes cutting edge laboratory techniques to unravel the mysteries of immune deficiency and immune dysregulation.   Her current work centers around the immunodeficiency of the STAT family transcription factors.