Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Chemokines are a family of more than forty small, secreted proteins. Chemokines have been divided into CXC, CC, C and CX3C subfamilies. Functionally, chemokines can be divided into homeostatic and inflammatory; homeostatic chemokines play critical roles in lymphoid organogenesis and homeostasis, while inflammatory chemokines are involved in inflammatory responses. Chemokines target cells through receptors that are members of the seven transmembrane domain G protein-coupled receptor superfamily. My research focuses on understanding the chemokines and their receptors from the perspectives of biochemistry and immunology. There are two principal research interests in my laboratory: (1) dissecting the signaling pathway used by the CCR6 receptor and investigating how CCR6 traffics within the cell in response to activation by chemokine agonist; (2) investigating the biology of chemokines/chemokine receptors in inflammatory and infectious diseases using gene-targeted mice, such as the biological functions of chemokines/chemokine receptors in virus infection and the biological roles of CCR6 and CXCR3 in inflammatory diseases.