Principal Investigator Alex Shalek
A diverse array of mechanisms -- including genetic mutations, environmental triggers, and diet—can alter cell function and reduce tissue stability, ultimately leading to malignancy, autoimmunity, or immunodeficiency. By identifying which cells these factors affect and in what ways, we aim to develop targeted therapeutic interventions in areas such as cancer, allergy, and inflammatory bowel disease.
Motivating questions that drive our research include:(*) How do the coordinated interactions between epithelial and immune populations inform barrier tissue function in the context of homeostasis, inflammation and malignancy?(*) How can we leverage information across systems to derive a set of unifying principles of cellular ecology in health and disease?
Current projects aim to contrast the cellular microenvironments of healthy, inflamed, and malignant tissues to examine inflammation-induced changes and the drivers of malignant transformation, as well as to identify which cells remember prior insult. We are similarly profiling aberrant immune behaviors in immune privileged tissues, such as the nervous systems. As in the host-microbial studies, our goal is to identify common features shared across different immune-related diseases that we can probe further in natural (tissues, models) and engineered (patterned cells and cellular structures, organoids) ensembles.