Biography
I am a Research Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of New Mexico and Comprehensive Cancer Center. I received my MD from Kagoshima University (Japan) in 1997 and took 2-years of clinical training. I completed a Ph.D. with research on the immune regulation by suppressors of cytokine signaling (SOCS) family under the mentorship of Dr. Akihiko Yoshimura in Molecular Cellular Immunology at Kyushu University (Japan). In 2005, I pursued postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Steven L Reiner at the University of Pennsylvania, where I learned T cell immunology through research about T cell fate determination. To continue learning about T cell fate diversity, I did an additional postdoctoral research about the cell cycle progression during CD8 T cell differentiation in Dr. Wolfgang Weninger’s lab at the Centenary Institute in Sydney from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Bridget S Wilson at the University of New Mexico and investigated immunotoxin-based treatment against acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I also determined the novel mechanisms for brain metastasis of leukemia. In 2017, I moved to Dr. Sarah F Adams’ lab for a research project about the combination of treatment with PARP inhibitors and immune checkpoint blockade against ovarian cancer. In 2022, I took a step to become an independent PI to study the impact of PARP inhibition on T-cell functions in the ovarian cancer tumor microenvironment.
Personal Statement
remote
Areas of Specialty
Cell biology - Cytokine signaling pathways
Immunology - Infectious immunology, autoimmunity, Tumor immunology,
T cell biology, macrophage biology
Microbiology - Influenza virus, Leishmania
Cancer biology - tumorigenesis, leukemia, colon cancer, liver cancer, ovarian cancer
Gender
Female
Languages
- English
- Japanese