I originally rotated with Dr. Karandikar and assessed the interaction of cytokine treatment in conferring CD4+ T cell resistance to CD8+ T cell suppression. Following the rotation, I briefly did work on examining how T cells sense their environment, and how that influences function and fate of these cells. Coming back to the lab I am hoping to elucidate the mechanism by which T cells interact with each other and communicate to orchestrate the pathology seen in Multiple Sclerosis patients.

Publications:

Teghanemt A, Misel-Wuchter K, Heath J, Thurman A, Pulipati P, Dixit G, Geesala R, Meyerholz DK, Maretzky T, Pezzulo A, Issuree PD. DNA demethylation fine-tunes IL-2 production during thymic regulatory T cell differentiation. EMBO Rep. 2023 May 4;24(5):e55543. doi: 10.15252/embr.202255543. Epub 2023 Mar 7. PMID: 36880575; PMCID: PMC10157375.

Honors and Awards:

Internal Medicine Research Day, Best Trainee Poster (2022)
University of Iowa 3 Minute Thesis Finalist (2022)
Immunology T32 Pre-Doctoral Training Grant (2022-2023)