Research Abstract

My research focuses on the diagnosis and analysis of hematopoietic neoplasms, particularly those of the immune system, to understand the relationship of these neoplasms to their normal cellular counterparts, and to identify new biological markers and approaches for their diagnosis, subtyping, and treatment. This work has included studies of a number of important biomarkers for the characterization of B cell and T cell neoplasms and other hematopoietic neoplasms, a number of which are widely utilized in clinical practice, and include: immune checkpoint receptor Programmed Death-1 (PD-1), including the first report that it is a marker of angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma, as well as a study of PD-L1 and PD-L2 ligands, which found that they are expressed in epithelial malignancies and play a role in attenuating the anti-tumor immune response, the foundational work for checkpoint inhibitor blockade as a treatment for a wide variety of solid tumors; chemokine receptors, which are involved in chemotaxis and cell migration of immune system cells, including neoplastic cells, in B cell and T cell neoplasms; OX-2 membrane glycoprotein (CD200), an immunomodulatory molecule, in angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma and a subset of B cell lymphomas, including hairy cell leukemia and mediastinal large B cell lymphoma, hairy cell leukemia and lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma; T cell transcription factors in T cell and B cell neoplasms; EZH2 methytransferase, which contributes to tumor development in hematopoietic malignancies, in T cell and B cell neoplasms as well as histiocytic and dendritic neoplasms and Hodgkin lymphomas; CD5 in B cell and T cell neoplasms and thymic epithelial neoplasms.