BATS

Date/Time:

Feb 24, 2023 - 12:00 PM

Location:

Hosts:

Bevin Engelward

Speaker:

Title:

Investigating Effects of AXL Inhibition on the Tumor Immune Microenvironment

Abstract:

AXL, a receptor tyrosine kinase implicated in cancer progression, is known to facilitate drug resistance via bypass signaling. AXL is a promising therapeutic target, with many studies focusing on how its inhibition affects cancer cells, but few groups have explored the effects of AXL inhibition on immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Here, we present our work toward building an in vitro model of cancer-immune cell interactions to gain a quantitative, mechanistic understanding of AXL’s role in the TME and anti-tumor immunity.

Speaker:

Title:

Taking a Pause: Uncovering the Role of RNA Structure in Mammalian Transcription

Abstract:

Precisely controlled gene expression is central to human health and is fundamental to biological engineering. In mammalian cells, transcription of mRNA is often limited by a bottleneck that occurs when RNA polymerase pauses downstream of the promoter. Transcriptional pausing has been found to be important in HIV, innate immunity, and cancer, but the mechanism of mammalian pausing remains unclear. Here, we investigate a hypothesis that nascent RNA structures contribute to pausing and thereby aid in controlling the expression of mammalian genes.