We are an internationally diverse group of scientists who share a common passion: scientific discovery. Here at AU, we blend our expertise and creativity to discover new ways to harness the power of the immune system to treat disease. If you are interested in joining our team, please email us!
Catherine 'Lynn' Hedrick, PhD
Georgia Research Alliance Bradley Turner Eminent Scholar in Vascular and Cancer Immunology
Head, Cancer Immunology, Inflammation, and Tolerance (CIIT) Division of the Georgia
Cancer Center
Co-Director, Immunology Center of Georgia
Professor, Department of Medicine
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
Immune cells are central to our health and are key cellular players in fighting disease. Innate immune myeloid cells, (including monocytes, dendritic cells, neutrophils, and macrophages) are early responder immune cells that sense pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and even tumor cells, and then orchestrate their killing. Our laboratory studies these myeloid cells in health, cardiovascular disease, and cancers. Key new projects are to determine how these innate immune cells differ in healthy men and women and in healthy people from different ethnicities, and how these differences impact disease susceptibility.
We utilize high dimensional immunoprofiling methods, including CyTOF mass cytometry and single cell RNA sequencing to study myeloid cells in healthy humans, and in human subjects with heart disease and cancer. We use our discoveries to create new molecular targets of disease and to predict responses to immunotherapy.
Layne Benson, BS
United States of America
Irina Baranovskaya, PhD
Russia
Gabriel Valentin-Guillama, PhD
Puerto Rico
Yali Zhu, PhD
United States of America
Ravi Komaravolu, PhD
India
Mikhail Fomin, MS
United States of America
Hridya Divakaran, MS
India
Natalia Jaeger, PhD
Brazil
Sabrina Robichaud, PhD
Canada
Aleksandr (Sasha) Taraskin, PhD
Russia
Ahmad Alimadadi, PhD
Iran
How does lipid metabolism in macrophages impact the tumor microenvironment to regulate tumor growth?
Here, we study specialized mouse models of lipid metabolism and blood from human cancer patients to understand how lipid pathway changes in myeloid cells alter tumor growth. Methods include working with human clinical sample analysis, tumor mouse models, immunoprofiling, high parameter flow cytometry, CyTOF, bioinformatics, and metabolic studies.
How do monocytes recognize tumor cells that are undergoing metastasis?
Select subsets of monocytes are critical in orchestrating the killing of tumor cells as they are traveling through the vasculature to new seeding sites. Here we seek to understand how these cells selectively identify the metastatic tumor cell. Methods include working with tumor mouse models, immunoprofiling, high parameter flow cytometry, RNa sequencing, intravital live cell imaging.
How do monocytes and macrophage cell subsets influence cardiovascular events that occur in cancer patients?
Some cancer patients receiving therapy develop cardiovascular complications, the understanding of which is the emerging field of cardio-oncology. Here, we will study monocyte subsets and functions in cancer patients who develop cardiovascular complications. Methods include working with human blood samples, immunoprofiling, high parameter flow cytometry, functional assays, and bioinformatics approaches.
How are monocytes changed in atherosclerosis progression? Are there specific functional markers that can be utilized to prevent disease progression? How do they influence T and B cell adaptive responses?
Monocytes play several key roles in atherosclerosis, but we still don’t mechanistically understand how we can better enhance them or target them to control atherosclerosis progression. Here, we study monocytes in human subjects with low to high cardiovascular disease severity to answer these questions using flow cytometry, single cell RNA sequencing, bioinformatics approaches, genetic mouse models of monocyte subsets, and functional assays.
Are there sex and ethnic differences present in monocyte subsets that change how they function in atherosclerosis?
Females develop less atherosclerosis until menopause. Ethnic differences in atherosclerosis progression have been reported. Here, we study how sex and ethnicity impacts monocyte function in cardiovascular disease. High dimensional immunoprofiling, epidemiology, bioinformatics and functional assays will be utilized to answer these questions.
