Our research is focused on translational tumor immunology discovering new targets and pathways in the tumor microenvironment that can lead to improvements in patient responses to immune-based therapeutics.  The field of immunotherapy has exploded in the last several years with many successes and cures observed in patients, however few responses have been observed in pancreatic cancer. Our laboratory is focused on further understanding the pancreatic tumor microenvironment and determining the mechanisms of resistance to immune-based therapeutics. The laboratory is investigating how cell surface proteins (e.g. CD200) expressed by the tumor and stromal cells promotes the expansion and function of immunosuppressive cell types like MDSC. Additionally, we are interested in how these immunosuppressive immune populations affect cancer-induced cachexia which is a debilitating syndrome in patients with pancreatic cancer.  The laboratory is also investigating the use of dietary nutritional intervention to modulate inflammation in chronic diseases and cancer.  Many of these same immunsuppressive pathways observed in pancreatic cancer are also observed in other inflammatory diseases, such as chronic pancreatitis.  We feel that neutralizing aberrant inflammatory responses may in fact be a viable first line of defense against cancer. One very interesting approach to limiting inflammation lies in use of dietary intervention with foods possessing known chemopreventive activity.  Our research has shown that active metabolites from dietary compounds such as soy, black raspberries, and tomatoes can alter inflammatory factors and immune populations.  Our preliminary work has led to an USDA-AFRI foundation grant (Co-PI: GRT00048283) on a soy-tomato enriched diet as modulator of inflammation in men with obesity. Research in our laboratory has shown that these diets can also modulate the severity and inflammation in pre-clinical animal models of pancreatitis. The ultimate goal of our work is to discover and identify novel immunological pathways that we can target in patients to hopefully improve responses in patients with cancer and inflammatory diseases.

 

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