Table of Contents
Nami McCarty, Ph.D.
assistant professor of molecular medicine, IMM, and GSBS
Research Work: Isolation and Characterization of Human Lymphoma Initiating Cells (L-ICs) and Characterization of the Role of Adaptor Proteins in TCR Recycling and Tumor Immunity
Nami McCarty, Ph.D.
T cells are types of white blood cells, or lymphocytes, that coordinate the body’s immune system responses to foreign invaders, like infections and diseases. T cells develop in the thymus; hence, the “T” in T cells means “thymus.”
T cells mature and differentiate into several types, but each retains an important role in the immune system.
As a postdoctoral fellow, Nami McCarty, Ph.D., trained in the laboratory of Harvey Cantor, M.D., at Dana- Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. “Cantor found that T cells have more than one subset – helper T cells (CD4 T cells) and killer T cells (CD8 T cells),” McCarty said.
McCarty, now an assistant professor of molecular medicine at the IMM, chose to dedicate her research to understanding T cell development and differentiation.
Using genomic-based methods to reduce or suppress specific genes, one project in McCarty’s laboratory is to study the characterization of molecules that are important in immune responses. This project already has led to an important discovery.
“I identified and characterized a critical signaling molecule necessary for T cell development and differentiation,” McCarty said.
A second project involves the isolation and characterization of lymphoma-initiating cells. A lymphoma is a type of cancer that begins in the cells of the immune system.
McCarty said she hopes her work will lead to targeted therapies for treating lymphoma.
“My lab is actively studying whether lymphoma is hierarchically organized so that only rare subsets of cells (stem cells) possess the potential to initiate and form new tumors,” she said. “If we can identify tumor-initiating cells, therapies have to be designed to target these cells.”