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The human body is estimated to remove 1 percent of its body mass, likely more than 200 billion cells, every day. To achieve this, we rely on a highly evolutionarily conserved process: apoptotic cell clearance or efferocytosis. The long-term goal of our lab is to understand how phagocytes handle the immense burden of ingestion and digestion of apoptotic corpses — a process essential for normal development and tissue homeostasis, but also cancer development and progression. We hope to use the information gained through basic studies of efferocytosis to design novel therapeutics.

Justin Perry, PhD
Assistant Professor
Research Focus
Immunologist Justin Perry investigates homeostatic apoptotic cell clearance and how this process is exploited during cancer development and progression.Education
PhD, Washington University in St. LouisPublications
- Morioka, S.*, Perry, J. S. A.*, Raymond, M. H., Medina, C., Onengut-Gumuscu, S., Ravichandran, K. S. Efferocytosis induces a novel SLC program to promote glucose uptake and lactate release. Nature. 563, 714-718. *equal contribution.
- Perry, J. S. A., Russler-Germain, E. V., Zhou, Y. W., Purtha, W., Cooper, M. L., Choi, J., Salazar, V., Egawa, T., Lee, B.-C., Abumrad, N. A., Kim, B., Anderson, M., DiPersio, J. F. & Hsieh. C.-S. (2018). Transfer of cell-surface antigens by scavenger receptor CD36 promotes thymic tegulatory T cell receptor repertoire development and allo-tolerance. Immunity. 48(5), 923-936.