Cancer, fundamentally, is a disease of disordered gene expression. Cancer cells rely on deregulated expression of oncogenic and tumor suppressive pathways to initiate and maintain the transformation process. Thus, delineating how cancer cells achieve such pathologic gene expression states is a crucial step towards understanding and ultimately treating cancer as a disease.
I am a physician-scientist with an interest in airway epithelial dysfunction in asthma. Specifically, my lab focuses on understanding how genetic risk variants that are associated with asthma at a population level, actually confer risk of disease at a molecular level. We use novel techniques such as conditionally reprogrammed primary airway epithelial cells, CRISPR gene deletion, and biospecimens from large numbers of human subjects to discover the function of genes associated with asthma and elucidate the causal single nucleotide polymorphism.
The Halkias lab studies the cellular and molecular signals that drive human immune development with a focus on understanding how early life host-microbe interactions influence adaptive immune responses to perinatal inflammatory disorders such as preterm birth. Early life is a critical time in immune development marked by rapid exposure to environmental antigens. Microbial colonization of mucosal tissues plays a key role in the development and education of the host immune system and influences the susceptibility to immune-mediated disease later in life.
Stephen L. Hauser, M.D. is the Robert A. Fishman Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is Director of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, an umbrella organization that links the clinical and basic neurosciences at UCSF to accelerate research against neurologic diseases. A neuroimmunologist, Dr. Hauser’s research has advanced our understanding of the genetic basis, immune mechanisms, and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).
Anke Hemmerling, MD PhD MPH, is an Associate Adjunct Professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and the Director of the Interdisciplinary MPH Program in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
She received her medical and public health training at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany) and at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). During her clinical training, she repeatedly worked in health projects and hospitals in Latin America.
I am a mechanical engineer and bioengineer. My laboratory studies interactions between microbes, musculoskeletal tissues and materials. We are currently studying the effects of the gut microbiome on the musculoskeletal system and the success of orthopaedic surgery. Additionally we are studying mechanobiology of bacteria and advancing the new field of Engineered Living Materials.
Mechanical loads manifest into strains within tissues and interfaces of an organ. Strains within tissues are transduced by the cells to produce the needed extracellular matrix proteins to meet functional demands. This is the general philosophy of research in my laboratory which is within the Division of Biomaterials and Bioengineering. Our lab has a strong focus on mechanics, materials, and investigating adaptation of tissues/interfaces through spatiotemporal mapping of “mechano-responsiveness”.
The Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine (BCMM) stands committed to dismantling the structural barriers to education, research and employment endemic in our society, to promoting awareness of implicit bias and reinforcing inclusivity.