Darren R. Heintzman
Graduate Student , Molecular Pathology and Immunology
Dr. Jeffrey Rathmell (Thesis)
Dr. Brent Farrell (Clinical)
The Rathmell lab focuses on how metabolic pathways influence the function and fate of lymphocytes in inflammatory diseases, anti-tumor immunity, and in leukemia. I am interested in how signaling mechanisms influence metabolic pathway activation and T cell differentiation. The importance of cytokine signaling can be seen in the differentiation of naïve T cells to either immune homeostatic Tregs or pro-inflammatory Th17 cells. Both subsets require the cytokine TGF-b for differentiation, but addition of the cytokine IL-6 causes differentiation to skew toward the proinflammatory Th17 subset and activates a host of distinct metabolic programs. Research in this area is expected to inform studies of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, which can utilize various signaling mechanisms to enhance survival, proliferation, and anti-tumor immunity.