The Hope Lab

CD8+ T cells are immune cells that are highly effective in the specific killing of infected cells or tumor cells and provide protection against infection and cancer. In patients however, CD8+ T cells repeatedly exposed to pathogens or tumor antigens progressively lose their functional killing abilities and can become “exhausted”. Immune checkpoint blockade therapies have leveraged our understanding of CD8+ T cell biology to reinvigorate anti-tumor CD8+ T cell responses and their landmark success in previously non-responsive cancer patients heralded a new era for immunotherapeutics. Yet many patients and cancers have remained resistant or become refractive to existing immune checkpoint blockade therapies, highlighting the need to identify novel targets and mechanisms to limit or reverse the development of T cell exhaustion.

To better understand the fundamental biology driving T cell exhaustion and identify new ways to enhance T cell function, our lab studies the development of T cell exhaustion in models of chronic virus infection and tumors. A major interest in our research is intrinsic-mediated T cell differentiation driven by P-selectin glycoprotein-1 (PSGL-1) signaling and immune modulation from T cell crosstalk with the inflammatory or tumor microenvironment and neighboring immune cells.