How can we identify key molecules and cells comprising the
multicellular circuitry of human immune systems that impact meaningful
clinical outcomes?
In my PhD at University of Cambridge and NIH with John Tsang
(NIH - NIAID) and Ken Smith
(Cambridge) we characterized molecular variations in human
populations, cell subsets, and single cells predictive of clinical
outcomes.
I focused on developing the concept of homeostatic human immune
system “setpoints” and how these were linked to different clinical
outcomes. In addition we defined how these setpoints were related to in
vivo perturbation phenotypes elicited by vaccination and cancer
immunotherapy.
To do this I developed research software and computational approaches
for denoising and statistical modeling high throughput immune system
data, with a focus on new multimodal single cell profiling methods such
as CITE-seq.
I’m currently focused on understanding molecular disease subtypes and how immune setpoints emerge and persist in different autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. My goals are to improve biomarker development and therapeutic strategies for patients with these diseases.