Kaito Hioki – NIH Trainee 2022-2024
Research progress:
I am a PhD student in the Pobezinsky lab, studying mechanisms of T cell-based immunity and classification of rare T cell subsets. During the last two years I worked on multiple different projects that resulted in two first author publications. For my first paper, I analyzed RNAseq data for transgenic T cells overexpressing the Let-7 microRNA, which have superior anti-tumor capacity compared to wild type T cells. In my second paper, I investigated a phenomenon of intercellular transfer of cytoplasmic material from tumor cells to immune cells in mice, and inspected the potentially detrimental impact on the immune system. Over the last year and a half, I worked on a follow-up project to investigate whether similar phenomena occur in healthy tissue, in particular with immune cells in the intestinal epithelium. This project split to a two projects after we discovered a novel population of cells by scRNAseq; however, several papers were published before we could complete our analyses to characterize these cells. This subproject is currently in writing for a small publication.
Publications:
Wells, A.C., Hioki, K.A., Angelou, C.C. Lynch, A.C., Liang, X., Ryan, D.J., Thesmar, I., Zhanybekova, S., Zuklys, S., Ullom, J., Cheong, A., Mager, J., Hollander, G.A., Pobezinskaya, E.L., and Pobezinsky, L.A. Let-7 enhances murine anti-tumor CD8 T cell responses by promoting memory and antagonizing terminal differentiation. Nat Commun 14, 5585 (2023). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40959-7
Hioki, K.A., Ryan, D.J., Thesmar, I., Lynch, A.C., Pobezinsky, L.A. and Pobezinskaya, E.L. The mosquito effect: regulatory and effector T cells acquire cytoplasmic material from tumor cells through intercellular transfer. Front. Immunol. 14:1272918 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1272918
He, X. D., Phillips, S., Hioki, K.A., Majhi, P. D., Babbitt, C., Tremblay, K. D., Pobezinsky, L. A., & Mager, J. (2024). TATA-binding associated factors have distinct roles during early mammalian development. Developmental Biology, 511, 53–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2024.04.002