We have ongoing research activities in the following areas:
Determinants of Immunotherapy Response and Resistance in Colorectal Cancer A primary focus of our lab is to study the tumor microenvironment in colorectal cancer and the cell types, oncomicrobes,and molecular pathways that mediate immunotherapy resistance in this disease. To this end, we use a multitude of approaches including immunogenomic, microbiomic and pathologic analyses of specimens from patients with colorectal cancer, characterizing the human colorectal atlas at single-cell level resolution and generating patient-derived organoid models for functional studies. Our research efforts are enhanced by translational studies on biospecimens from patients with colorectal cancer receiving immunotherapies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Integrative Molecular Epidemiology Studies of Colorectal Cancer We have comprehensively characterized over one-thousand colorectal tumors collected from two exquisitely annotated prospective cohort studies. Through the integration of Whole Exome Sequencing, RNA-Seq, pathologic, microbial and epidemiologic data we aim to gain insights into the pathophysiology of colorectal cancer, its interplay with lifestyle and other macroenvironmental factors and devise novel treatment and prevention strategies for this disease.
Metabolomic Adaptations of Malignancies to Immunotherapies An area of interest in our group is how metabolic mediators may impact response to immune checkpoint inhibition in gastrointestinal and other malignancies. We have partnered with clinical and biopharmaceutical company collaborators to analyze biospecimens procured from patients with a variery of tumor types receiving immunotherapies in order to identify novel predictors of response and design novel immunotherapy combination trials.