UMCUniversity of Massachusetts Chan Medical School · Microbiology & Immunology
The T Cell Defense Lab
Samuel M Behar · Worcester, Massachusetts
Research Focus
Dr. Samuel M. Behar's lab focuses on understanding how the immune system, particularly CD8 T cells, can effectively combat tuberculosis (TB). They study how the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades the immune response and explore new vaccine strategies to enhance T cell responses against TB. The lab also investigates how metabolic stress and conditions like hypoxia affect T cell function, aiming to develop approaches that can restore or improve T cell activity.
tuberculosisCD8 T cellsimmune responsemetabolic stressvaccine developmentT cell dysfunctionhypoxiaM. tuberculosisgranulomaimmunology
Research Aims
4AIM 01Investigate how CD8 T cells recognize M. tuberculosis-infected macrophages.
AIM 02Characterize the impact of CD4 help on CD8 T cell function and exhaustion.
AIM 03Identify protective antigens that CD8 T cells recognize in M. tuberculosis.
AIM 04Assess how hypoxia and metabolic stress affect T cell immunity against tuberculosis.
Skills the Lab Values
cell culturemouse modelsflow cytometryRNA sequencingPCRscRNA-seqT cell activation studiesimmunological assaysmetabolic profilinggene expression analysis
Output against the department
Publications176top 38% of dept.183rd of 486
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations16ktop 25% of dept.121st of 486
this lab
most citedleast cited
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