Pawel Kalinski, MD, Ph.D.

The research in the lab of Pawel Kalinski addresses basic aspects of dendritic cell (DC) biology, focusing on the functional modulation of DC as a way to develop effective vaccination strategies against cancer. The central question is how to "instruct" DC to induce the response of desired character (dominated by IFN-?-producing Th1 cells and cytotoxic CD8+ T cells), and how to counteract the undesirable Th2 bias and immunosuppression observed in cancer patients. Three major lines of research are: 1) Development of in vitro protocols to generate DC with the optimal Th1-inducing properties, by modulating the conditions of DC development; 2) Developing of means to boost the therapeutic efficacy of DC in vivo, by modifying the patterns of their interaction with other immune cells, such as CD8+ CTLs and NK cells; 3) Analyzing the ability of tumors to suppress the functions of DC and designing the strategies to counteract such phenomena. The above projects are performed in collaboration with Drs. Walter Storkus, Angus Thomson, Penny Morel, Per Basse, Hideho Okada, Andrea Gambotto, Elaine Elder, Charles Rinaldo, Lou Falo and Russ Salter.