The focus of my current research is intercellular communication both in healthy organisms and under conditions of infections and cancer. The main questions are what mechanisms beyond classical receptor/ligand interaction are involved in the exchange of the information between cells of the immune system, what information is shared, and how this affects cellular functions.

 

Another big area of research in the lab that I am involved in is studying the role of let-7 miRNA family in T cell biology. We have shown that while let-7 miRNAs regulate homeostatic maintenance of the peripheral T cell pool by supporting survival of naïve T cells and enforcing their quiescence, successful activation and differentiation of effector T cells is dependent on the downregulation of let-7 upon antigen recognition. Therefore, one of the goals is to identify let-7-mediated molecular mechanisms that control peripheral T cell homeostasis. On the other hand, I am also interested in transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation of let-7 miRNA expression, as the ability to modulate the levels of let-7 in T cells during immune responses has a promising therapeutic potential.