University of Minnesota MSTP (MD/PhD)

09/09/2025

Check out the co-author paper by Lexi Luo in Blood titled "Leukemia escapes immunity by imposing a type 1 regulatory program on neoantigen-specific CD4+ T cells".

The significance of endogenous immune surveillance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) remains controversial. Using clinical B-ALL samples and a novel mouse model, we show that neoantigen-specific CD4+ T-cells are induced to adopt type-1 regulatory (Tr1) function in the leukemia microenvironment.....

09/05/2025

The 2025 MSTP White Coat Selfie

09/02/2025

Check out the co-author paper by John Lozada in Blood titled "Chronic NK cell activation results in a dysfunctional, tissue resident-like state mediated by KLF2 deficiency".

Adoptive transfer of NK cells can induce complete remissions in 30-50% of patients with refractory acute myeloid leukemia and lymphoma. While blood chimerism occurs, attaining functional homing to the site of tumor without exhaustion has been elusive. During chronic infections and tumorigenesis, exp...

08/25/2025

Congratulations to Olivia Smith, who successfully defended her PhD. The title of Olivia's thesis is "Paracrine mechanisms of CD8 T cell antitumor and antiviral immunity"

08/19/2025

Congratulations to Saurin Kantesaria, who successfully defended his PhD. The title of Saurin's thesis is "Low Frequency Longitudinally-Detected Electron Paramagnetic Resonance for the Detection of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles in Tissues"

08/18/2025

Check out the first author paper by Sinibaldo Romero Arocha in JMIR Research Protocols "Effects of acute time-restricted eating on inflammation in individuals with psoriasis: protocol for a case-control, prospective study".

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04728165; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04728165.

08/15/2025

Congratulations to Sarah Wall, who successfully defended her PhD. The title of Sarah's thesis is "Making good memories: investigating the generation of protective and pathogenic memory CD8+ T cells"

08/14/2025

Check out the co-author review by Taylor Brown in Histology and Histopathology titled "Astrocyte heterogeneity and gliosis in Huntington's disease: Histopathological insights into striatal and white matter pathology".

Huntington's disease (HD) is a devastating, autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive motor dysfunction, cognitive decline, and psychiatric disturbances. Among the major pathological hallmarks of HD are mutant huntingtin aggregation, white matter loss and reactive as...

08/13/2025

Thank you to the outstanding undergraduates who spent the summer with us in the Life Sciences Summer Undergraduate Research Programs (LSSURP) and pre-MSTP.

08/12/2025

Congratulations to Jovany Betancourt, who successfully defended his PhD. The title of Jovany's thesis is "Investigating the host-pathogen characteristics of latent Cryptococcus neoformans infection"

08/11/2025

Check out the co-author paper by Hannah Bergom in NPJ Precision Oncology titled "CREB5 promotes tumorigenicity and upregulates druggable cell surface modalities in basal-like breast cancer".

Basal-like breast cancers (BLBC) have limited targeted therapies and poor outcomes. We found that CREB5 is a transcription factor overexpressed in 15% of BLBCs and was upregulated in breast cancers that metastasize to the brain. In cell lines, CREB5 overexpression regulated cell phenotypes and trans...

08/04/2025

Check out the first author paper by Adrina Kocharian in Nature Neuroscience titled "Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind".

Nucleus accumbens dopamine signaling is an important neural substrate for decision-making. Dominant theories generally discretize and homogenize decision-making, when it is in fact a continuous process, with evaluation and re-evaluation components that extend beyond simple outcome prediction into co...