T Cell Interaction Lab

Our immune system consists of dedicated immune cells that collaborate to protect against infection and disease. T cells are orchestrators of immune responses and require multiple interactions with distinct partner cells to steer their function. Our laboratory observes and dissects these interactions with unprecedented precision to understand how cellular interactions can be harnessed to direct the outcome of immune responses.

We aim to identify how T cell interactions:

• determine the clearance of pathogens (such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2) or cancer cells
• are tailored between infections and go awry in asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and during immune-related adverse immunotherapy events; and
• understand how memory cells are generated and maintained for long-lived vaccine protection.

Our goal is to apply these discoveries to enable the design of new vaccine strategies and drive the generation of novel therapies to overcome cancer, asthma and autoimmunity.

Research from our lab has highlighted the importance of precise T cell location and their cell contacts in directing and modulating these responses.
Discovery: T cell fates are programmed within distinct lymph node niches
Discovery: Development of vaccine platform that specifically enhances memory formation
Discovery: Identified new niche where T cells reside long-term
Discovery: Identified flexible transcriptional pathogen-specific programs
Tech development: Generation of the first chemokine reporter mouse
Tech development: Tissue clearing of intact organs and analysis pipeline for analysis of cells in 3D space
Tech development: New microfluidics chamber to assess cell migration decisions