Studying tissue-specific interactions between metabolism and immunity
CD8+ T cells exhibit a remarkable capacity to infiltrate diverse tissues throughout the body. Given that every tissue is physiologically and metabolically distinct, it is important to understand how tissue infiltrating T cells metabolically adapt in a tissue-specific manner to maintain optimal responses and how these adaptations are dysregulated in disease. This information can be further used to manipulate T cell responses to manage a variety of diseases where T cell responses are involved. Therefore, a major goal of the lab is to understand how different T cells metabolically adapt to different tissue microenvironments during homeostatic and disease state such as tumor, autoimmunity or chronic virus infection.
Varanasi, SK, Chen, D, Liu, Y, Johnson, MA, ...Kaech, SM.
Bile acid synthesis impedes tumor-specific T cell responses during liver cancer.
Science. 2025 Jan 10;387(6730):192-201. doi: 10.1126/science.adl4100. Epub 2025 Jan 9.
Mangalhara KC, Varanasi SK, Johnson MA, Burns MJ, Rojas GR, Esparza Moltó PB, ...Shadel GS.
Manipulating mitochondrial electron flow enhances tumor immunogenicity.
Science. 2023 Sep 22;381(6664):1316-1323. doi: 10.1126/science.abq1053. Epub 2023 Sep 21.
Chen D, Varanasi SK, Hara T, Traina K, Sun M, McDonald B,...Kaech SM.
CTLA-4 blockade induces a microglia-Th1 cell partnership that stimulates microglia phagocytosis and anti-tumor function in glioblastoma.
Immunity. 2023 Sep 12;56(9):2086-2104.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2023.07.015. Epub 2023 Aug 11.
Varanasi SK, Kaech SM, Bui JD.
SnapShot: Cancer immunoediting.
Cell. 2022 Oct 13;185(21):4038-4038.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.027. PMID: 36240741.
Varanasi SK, Kumar SV, Rouse BT.
Determinants of Tissue-Specific Metabolic Adaptation of T Cells.
Cell Metab. 2020 Dec 1;32(6):908-919. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.10.013. Epub 2020 Nov 11.
The Varanasi lab is hiring at all levels including research assistants, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. Please contact Dr. Siva Karthik Varanasi if you are interested.
Interested postdoctoral candidates should also send their CV, a brief description of their research, and what interests them in our field of study.
