My laboratory has a long standing interest in how the inflammatory milieu regulates the function of CD8 T cells. Using a number of viral infection models we have studied how cytokines can both positively and negatively regulate the function of T cells. Current projects include the impact of acute and chronic viral infection on T cell development, how chronic inflammation impacts the glycosylation status of T cells to negatively regulate their function, how a novel transcription factor regulates the function of effector and memory t cell responses and how Zika virus infections can counter immune responses. All of these findings are generating important data regulating the factors that can intrinsically and extrinsically impact T cell function. While we have primarily used viral infection models to date, our findings likely have some relevance to cancer models and we have recently started acquiring tumor cell lines to use them to determine whether our findings are relevant to cancer immunology. Planned future directions include understanding how glycosylation patterns impact T cell function in various tumors, how tumors impact T cell development and cell fate decision in the thymus and how Aff3 deficiency impact the capacity of T cells to respond to tumors. As such, we believe that our work is a good fit for the cancer center and that cancer center membership would allow us to expand our research portfolio by providing us with required expertise.
Post-doctoral Fellowship - University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 10/2014
Post-doctoral Fellowship - University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC 09/2010
Ph.D. - University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC 05/2010
