Interferon and PRRs

The interferon and pattern recognition receptor pathways (PRRs) are typically associated with pathogen infection, yet are pervasively expressed across human cancers. Moreover, common cancer therapies such as radiation can also activate these pathways. A major goal is to understand the function and regulation of these pathways in cancer cells and associated immune cells.

Inflammatory signaling

Cancer has been described as a “wound that does not heal”. This description represents the ability of cancer cells to disrupt the homeostatic properties of inflammatory signaling that drive tumor growth, promote immune evasion, and suppress cell death. We seek to understand the critical regulators of inflammatory signaling that cancer cells exploit.

Cancer-immune cross-talk

In the tumor microenvironment, cancer cells communicate with immune cells both locally and systemically. We are identifying how perturbations in cancer cells are propagated back-and-forth with immune populations to influence immunotherapy response.