THE QUESTION
Diseases like cancer are heterogeneous, complicating how we understand them and, therefore, treatment. Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, but many patients still face little or no clinical benefit with the same treatment. Recent high-dimensional technologies have allowed us the ability to understand the tissue ecosystem and its impact on treatment response. We are motivated by the questions of how the tissue microenvironment changes upon disease progression, before and after treatment, and if we can predict treatment responses based on blood immune cell signatures, with a special focus on neutrophils. A strong focus of the lab is characterizing and understanding neutrophils in wound healing. We wish to identify severe human burn biomarkers by looking at human samples and model organisms like zebrafish and mice.
THE APPROACH
We follow where science takes us. Currently, we leverage computational biology approaches, using high-dimensional data from multi-omics genome-wide (genomics and epigenomics) and single-cell assays, data mining, and bioinformatics. We develop and employ computational biology methods to mine publicly available data and in-house generated data for the specific questions we ask. We validate what we found in human data using independent data cohort, in vitro and in vivo approaches.
Ultimately, we aim to understand how the immune tissue microenvironment changes toward finding immunotherapeutic biomarkers and targets.
Although our central questions focus on the biomedical context, we are open to the collaborative environment in Madison to explore similar questions in other exciting areas.
Lab News
Former and current undergraduate students won prestigious fellowship
Sophia Ibargüen, a former MSTP summer scholar, won NIH’s Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award. Alicia Tee won the prestigious NSF REU program in Medical Informatics (13% acceptance rate) this summer. Congratulations!
April 3, 2023Collaborative AAI 2023 Intersect Fellowship for Computational Scientists and Immunologists awarded
Our collaborative project led by Yiran Hou, a postdoc in Anna Huttenlocher’s lab, has been funded. AAI Intersect Fellowship is designed to get a wet/dry lab postdoc to work in the interface of both fields …
March 18, 2023Skin Diseases Research Center pilot project awarded
We are excited to be awarded a pilot grant to study the roles of neutrophil heterogeneity in burn injury at the Skin Diseases Research Center at the University of Wisconsin (UWSDRC).
March 16, 2023- More News