Student Directory

Hometown:  Elizabeth, NJ/Rzeszow, Poland

Undergraduate Education:  BS/09 Biology/Rutgers

Research Interest:Cancer:  its immune environment and potentials for immunotherapy

Advisor:Douglas Stairs, PhD

Graduate Program:Biomedical Sciences

Thesis:

Description: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a primary malignancy of the liver that very often appears on a background of liver fibrosis, and chronic hepatitis.  HCC has noted the highest percent increase in rate of occurrence amongst all cancers.  Recent evidence unearthed a peculiar immunophenomenon that occurs in this disease.  Studies in mice show that increasing tumor size correlates with increased tolerance of the immune system.  The tumors upregulate the amounts of regulatory T cells, which presumably prohibit the organism from fighting back, and destroying the tumor.  Treatment of the tumor bearing mice with nanoliposomally packed ceremide appears to reverse that phenomenon.  Ceramide has been evaluated as an anticancer molecule in a diverse spectrum of cancers.  However, we believe that here it plays not only an antitumorigenic role, but also an immunomodulatory one.

Meeting Presentations:

Fleming JM, Miller TC, Kidacki M, Ginsburg E, Stuelten CH, Stewart DA, Troester MA, Vonderhaar BK (2012) Paracrine interactions between primary human macrophages and human fibroblasts enhance muring mammary gland humanization in vivo   Breast Cancer Res 14(3):R97 [Epub ahead of print]