My area of research involves the characterization of antigen-specific T cell responses in patients with advanced melanoma who receive ipilimumab, a monoclonal antibody against cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4, a negative regulator of the immune system. In particular, we are interested in identifying and characterizing antigen-specific responses by tetramer and intracellular cytokine staining in patients who are serologically negative for NY-ESO-1, a common cancer-testis antigen expressed on 30-40 percent of advanced melanoma tumors, who experience clinical benefit from ipilimumab therapy. We ultimately hope to identify a "second antigen" that patients receiving ipilimumab are able to mount an immune response to and which may be a target for subsequent immunotherapy strategies.

My other areas of research include validation of the Meso Scale Discovery (MSD) Sector Imager 2400, which permits simultaneous and accurate characterization of up to 10 cytokines in sera or culture supernatant. We are also currently analyzing a cohort of healthy donors and pancreatic cancer patients with and without depression to determine if there is a particular cytokine profile that is correlated with depression in pancreatic cancer patients, a symptom that can precede diagnosis of the underlying malignancy in up to 30 percent of patients. Finally, I am also interested in studying the immune effects of botanical products, e.g. maitake mushroom extract, that are believed to have immunomodulatory properties by examining their effects on antigen-specific T cell responses.