Venkata Boddupalli, PhD

I have worked for past 10 years understating mechanisms that regulate tissue resident immune cell homeostasis. In my PhD and postdoctoral research, I have studied underlying principles that govern homeostasis of Dendritic cells, Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs), Tissue Resident Memory T cells (T_RM) and NK cells. I did my PhD at University of Bern, Switzerland with Prof. Markus Manz. My doctoral research work revealed T cells as a source of Flt3L, facilitating DC maintenance in lymphoid tissues, also we identified hemostatic mechanisms employed by long term self-renewing HSCs in mice. At Yale Cancer Center under the guidance of Prof. Madhav Dhodapkar and Prof. Susan Kaech my research focused on defining features of T_RM cells using mouse models and studying their role in solid tumors. More recently under the guidance of Prof. Pramod Mistry and Dr.Tamar Taddei we are studying dysregulation of T_RM cells in liver cancers patients and in conditions of biliary inflammation. My long-term research goals are identifying specific tissue cues that regulate tissue immune surveillance.