- Associate Professor, Biology
General Information
Biography
(2001) M.S. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine in Grand Forks (2008) Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (2008-2009) Post-doc in Infectious Diseases at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (2009-2013) Research Instructor in Internal Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014-2019) Lektor (associate professor) in Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark
Teaching Interests
Immunology and General Biology
Research Interests
Our research group is focused on immunotherapy. We strive to develop immunotherapy approaches and to understand the impacts of those approaches on immune function(s). Our primary focus is on understanding the impacts of immunotherapy interventions on human natural killer (NK) cells. NK cells are a type of innate immune cell that is a rapid responder when a malignancy or infection occurs. NK cells can kill in two ways: (i) direct killing where targets are recognized as diseased by NK cells and (ii) ADCC or antibody-dependent cellular (cell-mediated) cytotoxicity where antibodies facilitate diseased cell recognition by NK cells. In our laboratory we study both killing mechanisms simultaneously using an approach that we developed. Our target cells for direct killing are a form of human leukemia and our target cells for ADCC are a form of human lymphoma. We recently discovered that certain immunotherapies do not equally impact the ability of human NK cells’ ability to perform direct killing and ADCC. Now we are working to understand the molecular mechanisms of this differential response as we also investigate new immunotherapy strategies. Our lab is funded by NE-INBRE, the Nebraska Research Initiative, and the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.