PCMM News

Zhouping Hong, PhD, (Wu Laboratory) has been awarded the Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship. The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defense, relying on inflammasomes, signaling platforms built from NOD-like receptors (NLRs), to detect danger and initiate inflammation. Although individual inflammasomes are well characterized, whether distinct NLRs cooperate remains unknown. Zhouping’s research explores the concept that different NLRs can assemble into super-inflammasome complexes that amplify immune signaling and may play key roles in inflammation, autoimmune disease, and cancer. Focusing on NLRP3 and NLRP1, Zhouping combines biochemical, biophysical, and structural approaches to define how these inflammasomes interact, how their cooperation enhances immune activation, and what molecular mechanisms govern their assembly. By establishing the first mechanistic framework for super-inflammasome formation, her work could reshape our understanding of innate immune regulation and reveal new therapeutic targets for inflammatory diseases.

Po-Ta Chen, Ph.D. (Ha Laboratory), has been awarded a Cancer Research Institute Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship. Po-Ta will study why exhausted CD8 T cells in tumors often remain dysfunctional despite PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade. His project focuses on whether the three-dimensional folding of DNA helps stabilize the molecular program of T cell exhaustion. To investigate this, Po-Ta developed GOLDFISH-X, a genome imaging technique that avoids heat denaturation and can measure DNA organization, gene activity, and local protein environments in the same single cells. He will apply this platform to key exhaustion-associated genes with the goal of identifying mechanisms that could be targeted to improve the durability of cancer immunotherapy.

Sherry Zhang, Ph.D., an instructor in the Hur Laboratory, has been awarded an NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Project Grant R21. The transcription regulator Aire plays a pivotal role in immune tolerance by enforcing the ectopic expression of peripheral tissue antigens (PTAs) for negative selection of autoreactive T cells in the thymus. Defects in Aire result in manifestations of autoimmune poly-glandular syndrome type 1 (APS-1). The goal of this grant is to elucidate the molecular mechanism of Aire in transcriptional regulation, with a specific focus on dissecting the spatial and temporal relationships between Aire transcriptional condensates and Aire-targeted PTA loci. This project is expected to address key gaps in our understanding of how Aire regulates PTA gene expression and have a broad impact on the field of transcriptional regulation.

Ayijiang Yisimayi, PhD, (Lieberman Laboratory) has been awarded a Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship. Her research focuses on developing strategies to harness the immune system to treat cancer. Many tumors accumulate cytosolic DNA due to chromosomal instability, which acts as a danger signal and triggers strong immune activation. Building on this, Ayijiang aims to convert immunologically “cold” tumors into “hot” ones by mimicking the potent immune responses of mismatch repair–deficient (MMRd) tumors. She will investigate how chromosomal instability drives anti-tumor immunity and explore how T cells can eliminate tumors independently of classical antigen presentation. In addition, she will examine how this approach induces durable and broad immune protection against diverse tumor types.