Eric Lau
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Microbiology & Immunology
Cancer immunotherapies help some patients, but often the benefit fades. One reason is that the body forms too few memory T cells, immune cells that remember a threat and keep fighting it over time.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biochemistry
- Topics
L-fucose
fucosylation
melanoma
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Determine how oral L-fucose changes signaling in CD4+ T cells, helper immune cells, so that more of them become central memory cells inside melanomas, using single-cell RNA sequencing.
- Test whether L-fucose-driven fucosylation, the attachment of sugar groups, drives the development and expansion of central memory CD4+ T cells in melanoma-bearing mice.
- Determine whether L-fucose enhances immunological memory and blocks melanoma recurrence in mice, including with the checkpoint drug anti-PD1.
More about the research
Methods to safely boost these cells are lacking. This project builds on the team's finding that a simple dietary sugar, L-fucose, can strengthen the immune attack on melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
Why it matters
Patients with melanoma and other cancers often lose their response to immunotherapy over time. An oral dietary sugar that boosts memory CD4+ T cells could offer a safe, simple way to make checkpoint drugs such as anti-PD1 work longer. It may also help prevent tumors from returning.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Max Wattenberg
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Determine how different subtypes of conventional dendritic cells, immune cells that present tumor pieces to T cells, shape tumor-specific CD4+ T cell memory. The work uses clinically relevant mouse models of pancreatic cancer.
Hussein Sultan
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how the EBI3 subunit of the suppressive cytokine IL-35 drives induction of Tr1 regulatory CD4 T cells, using IL-35 reporter mice in established tumor models to identify which cells produce it.
Jun Wang
New York University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether Siglec-15, a tumor-associated immune brake, also suppresses myeloid cells such as macrophages, and identify the receptors it binds on myeloid cells and T cells.
The school
Oregon Health & Science University: 24 labs on PI Pages, $545M a year on research, 54 research doctorates a year.
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