Robert Winchester
Columbia University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are cancer drugs that release the brakes on T cells, immune cells that can attack tumors. They have transformed cancer treatment.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
osteoarthritis
immune checkpoint inhibitors
immune-related adverse events
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Test whether immune checkpoint inhibitors convert PD-1+ tissue-resident memory (TRM) T cells in osteoarthritic joints into inflammatory effector T cells, using a longitudinal patient study that traces T-cell receptor (TCR) clonotypes as lineage barcodes.
- Characterize dendritic cells, which present antigens to T cells, in joint fluid from osteoarthritis and checkpoint-inhibitor arthritis using single-cell RNA sequencing, and predict cell-to-cell interaction pathways.
- Use spatial transcriptomics, which maps gene activity within intact tissue, to test whether effector T cells engage immunogenic dendritic cells in inflamed joints of patients with immune-related adverse event arthritis.
More about the research
More than half of treated patients, however, develop immune-related adverse events (irAEs), in which the unleashed immune system inflames healthy organs. One of these, a chronic arthritis, can force patients to stop essential cancer therapy and can leave lasting disability. Its causes are largely unknown. At the lab's irAE-arthritis clinic, patients with osteoarthritis (OA), the most common joint disease, were significantly more likely to develop irAE-arthritis on ICIs than matched patients without OA. This project asks why.
Why it matters
Cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors, especially those who already have osteoarthritis, could benefit from a clearer understanding of why their joints become inflamed. Identifying the joint-resident T cells and dendritic cells that drive irAE-arthritis could point to targeted treatments that calm joint inflammation without weakening the immune attack on tumors, helping patients stay on life-saving therapy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yili Zhang
Georgetown University, DC·Computer Science
Develop a large language model–based natural language processing pipeline that extracts immune-related adverse event evidence, type and grade from de-identified clinical notes, creating a reusable annotated corpus.
Bao Vuong
CUNY City College, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Describe the immune biology of skin side effects from immune checkpoint inhibitors using biological samples from an expanded cancer patient cohort.
Ryan Nelson
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Define how allergen-specific regulatory T cells that stay in the lung suppress Th2 resident memory T cells, characterizing their location, persistence, suppressive strength and gene expression in a house dust mite mouse model of asthma.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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