Neha is a rising senior at UC Davis majoring in Cell Biology. There she conducts research in Dr. Changil Hwang’s lab in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, studying the epigenetic regulation of pancreatic cancer metastasis. As part of the Amgen Scholars Program at UCLA, Neha works in Dr. Timothy O’Sullivan’s lab, which studies the innate immune system in the context of various diseases. Neha’s project is focused on natural killer (NK cells) and their role in tumor cell killing. NK cells are cytotoxic innate lymphocytes that play an important role in defense against viral infections and tumor
metastasis. Tumor cells have developed a number of evasive mechanisms to avoid immune cell killing, and one example of this is overexpression of HLA class I molecule (HLA-E), which binds to the NKG2A receptor on NK cells to inhibit NK cell proliferation. However, during human cytomegalovirus infection there is an expansion of NK cells expressing the activating NKG2C receptor complex, which also binds to HLA-E. Neha aims to study how overexpression of this activating receptor complex could provide a method of enhancing tumor cell killing by NK cells and ultimately provide insight into how NK cells can be more effectively utilized in cancer therapeutics. Neha would like to thank the O’Sullivan Lab, especially Dr. Timothy O’Sullivan and her graduate student mentor Joey Li, for their mentorship and support throughout the summer, as well as the Amgen Foundation for providing her with this opportunity to further her skills as a researcher.