Section of Cell and Developmental Biology
Division of Biological Sciences
University of California, San Diego
News
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05/24/2023 Isaac has delivered a wonderful Master's thesis talk. Congrats!
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05/22/2023 Jibin has passed his 2nd year proposition exam. Congrats!
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05/08/2023 Our cis-CD28 signaling paper is out on Immunity! Congrats to Yunlong, Yayuan and amazing collaborator Jack Bui!
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04/14/2023 Yayuan presented a poster at the BUMMP Annual Student Symposium. Great job!
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04/12/2023 Isaac has received offers from multiple PhD programs including UCSD, Duke and UC-Irvine. Congrats!
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04/12/2023 Our new CTLA4 paper is out on JEM! Super teamwork by co-1st authors Xiaozheng, Preston and Jibin! Congrats!
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03/30/2023 Yufei has been selected as a 2023 UTokyo Amgen Scholar. Congrats!
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02/09/2023 Ioanna Andritsogianni joined our group as a research assistant. Welcome!
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01/26/2023 Welcome our new lab assistant Alexandra Hotz!
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10/13/2022 Takeya has received the PRESTO Award from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Congrats!
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09/15/2022 Xiaozheng has accepted a Senior Principal Scientist position at Sanofi. Congrats!
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08/31/2022 Preston successfully defended his PhD thesis today! Congrats Dr. Dennett!
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08/05/2022 Yunlong has received a K99/R00 Award from NIAID! Congrats!
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06/28/2022 High school student Emily Yu has joined the lab as a research intern. Welcome!
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06/19/2022 High school students Elinor Silva and Hyerim Kim have started a summer internship with us. Welcome!
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06/10/2022 Isaac has graduated from UCSD with Magna Cum Laude! He has now become a Master's student with us. Congrats!
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05/06/2022 Yufei Liu has joined the lab as a research assistant. Welcome!
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04/28/2022 Takeya's collaboration with Neal Devaraj's lab has led to a paper on ACS Chemical Biology! Congrats!
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04/15/2022 Ariane Yu has joined the lab as a research assistant. Welcome!
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04/05/2022 Ola has been admitted to the PhD program of UC-Berkeley! Congrats!
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03/08/2022 Xiaozheng's co-1st author paper is now published on Immunity! Great colla. w/ Ira Mellman!
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11/04/2021 Xiaozheng and Takeya's co-1st author paper is now published on eLife! Terrific teamwork!
We work at at the interface of biochemistry, cell biology, and immunology. Our central goal is to dissect the cell biological mechanisms of immune checkpoints, "brakes" of our immune system that can be hijacked by tumors to evade immune destruction. Antibody mediated blockade of immune checkpoints has produced some success in treating a subset of tumors in a fraction of patients. However the response is restricted to a small subset of tumors and patients. Molecular studies of immune checkpoints are needed to expand the therapy to a larger population of patients. Our long-term goal is to fill this mechanistic gap, with a joint use of cell-free reconstitution, live cell imaging and cell culture assays.
Image by Graham Johnson
Cell free reconstitution: We reconstitute signaling networks on model membranes to gain quantitative, in-depth insights into T cell signaling that are invisible to traditional approaches.
Signaling dynamics: We probe the spatiotemporal dynamics of signaling proteins in live T cells.
Cell cultures: We develop precise and robust cell culture assays to probe both proximal and distal readouts of immune checkpoints signaling.
Mouse models: We cross-check our findings between in vitro systems and animal models.
