The exceptional collegiality and collaborate-first mentality of our colleagues in Cincinnati has enabled our lab to expansively pursue not only the projects described in detail above, but also to assess novel immune mechanisms contributing to other diseases.
With funding from the Cincinnati Research Foundation (collaboration with Marc Rothenberg, Sean Lang, Ken Kaufman, and Mingxia Gu), we identified a peroxidase gene mutation linked to giant aneurysm formation in Kawasaki Disease.
In another project, we have discovered a unique proteomic mechanism by which exosomes derived from human NK cells can modulate survival of other lymphocytes in disease settings (collaboration with Kim Risma).
A new student in the lab, Hilal Cevik, has uncovered an inflammatory mechanism through which NK cells control inflammation and tissue repair after muscle injury (collaboration with Doug Millay, Jeff Molkentin, Mattia Quattrocelli).
We are collaborating with numerous colleagues at Children’s Hospital (Brian Turpin, Richard Lu, Ralph Vatner, Marc Wunderlich, Gang Huang, Yuting Tang) and the University of Cincinnati (Laura Conforti, Trisha Wise-Draper) to develop novel strategies for enhancing or better employing the inherent antitumor functions to attack sarcomas, brain tumors, and other difficult-to-treat malignancies.
We are also exploring unexpected interactions between the hemostatic systemic and the function of T as well as NK cells during virus infection or immune disease in collaboration with Joe Palumbo, Neeru Hershey, and Michael Sherenian.
We are very interested in how NK cells contribute to chronicity and resolution of pain in diseases like fibromyalgia (Christopher King, Michael Jankowski).