I am an immunologist who runs a basic and translational research lab.
My laboratory focuses on understanding the interplay between infections, cancer, and the immune system. We have discovered that non-oncogenic (those that do not directly cause cancer) and non-oncolytic infections (those that do not directly kill cancer cells) regulate tumor occurrence and growth (in both negative and positive ways). Therefore, we strive to understand the mechanisms underlying these effects and to translate our findings toward patient therapies against cancer.
Toward this effort we utilize a double-humanized patient-derived xenograft model and novel biotechnologies that we have developed. These allow us to conduct in vivo (live!) studies of a patient’s anti-cancer immune response in the context of that patient’s intact tumor microenvironment, and to efficiently target our therapies to the tumor. Our goals are to discover new cancer immunotherapies and to develop a unified theory of infection, cancer, and autoimmunity.