Lab Members
Kim Jordan
Graduate Student
Kim’s goal is to add to the list of rules to design an effective mimotope vaccine. To easily test mimotopes, she has developed a new vaccine strategy in which insect cells infected with recombinant baculoviruses provide the antigen-specific signal (peptide or mimotope and MHC) and the adjuvant (Jordan 2008). This vaccine generates effective antitumor immunity with previously characterized mimotopes. Kim has used the new baculovirus library technology developed by Dr. John Kappler to discover many new peptide mimotopes that elicit antitumor T cell responses. She is determining the properties of effective mimotopes by studying the T cells elicited by vaccination with these new mimotopes.
Charles Kemmler
Graduate Student
Charles is working on uncovering the mechanisms of tumor protection after vaccination with mimotope peptides. One potential mechanisms accounting for improved antitumor immunity after mimotope vaccine may include enhanced production of IFN-gamma by tumor specific CD8+ T cells. Charles has shown that IFN-gamma might be especially important in the antitumor response generated by memory T cells. His interests also include the effects of aging on antitumor immunity.
Lance U’Ren, DVM, PhD
Post-Doc/Research Associate
Lance is a post-doc studying how tumor hypoxia effects T cell function and antitumor immunity. He is using various molecular techniques to increase the levels of HIF-1alpha protein levels in tumor-specific T cells. He is also interested in how different mechanisms of cell death (apoptosis v. autophagy) may effect the antitumor response. Prior to his arrival in the Slansky lab his research focused on mechanisms which regulate tumor-associated macrophages promotion of angiogenesis.
Jon Sprague
Med Student
Jon is a medical student at UCD, a cancer center summer fellow, and working on his medical school “mentored scholarly activity.” He is developing an assay to spectratype T cells which will provide information on the diversity of T cells responding to tumors in the presence and absence of endogenous expression of tumor antigen.
Erik Hayman
Med Student
Erik is a medical student at UCD and working on his medical school “mentored scholarly activity” with Lance. He is developing an assay to transfect T cells and to determine the result of decreasing VHL function in tumor-specific T cells.
Brandon Moore
Undergraduate
The scientist in Brandon takes care of all the labs genotyping and antibody production requirements. He is also working with Kim to determine what T cell clones respond to different mimotope vaccines. The handyman in Brandon keeps the entire lab up and running.
Jon Buhrman
Graduate Student
Buhrman is devising methods to screen baculovirus-encoded peptide libraries with T cells so that he can ask the question, Are T cells from the tumor or spleen of a vaccinated animal better for identifying mimotopes to be used in vaccines?
