Research Summary
Dr. Schneck’s research focuses on the basic mechanisms that control immune responses. Specifically, he studies how cytotoxic T-cells, known as killer T cells—cells that help eliminate infections or cancers—get activated, recognize their targets and get turned off again. His team focuses on how to manipulate the immune system with the hopes of designing improved anti-cancer therapies by ramping up the immune system, or treating autoimmune disease and transplant patients with better immune system suppression.
Lab
The Schneck Lab studies the biophysical, genetic and environmental control of the T cell receptor. The research team has developed an acellular aAPC, a lego-like system that can be used to study T cells responses at a variety of different levels. Currently aAPC are being used to study manipulation of in vivo CTL responses and hold potential as a therapeutic approaches to augment both adoptive and active immunotherapy.
The team also develops approaches to understanding genetic regulation of glycosylation, among the most complex post-translational modifications with an extremely high level of diversity that has made it refractory to high-throughput analyses. One approach developed is a lectin microarray for defining mammalian cell surface glycan signatures and analyzing diverse cell processes including cell development and differentiation, cell-cell communication, pathogen-host recognition, and cell surface biomarker identification. On-going studies further explore use of this new technology in the identification of novel biomarkers.
Selected Publications
View all on Pubmed
- Perica K, Bieler JG, Edidin M, Schneck J. Modulation of MHC binding by lateral association of TCR and coreceptor. Biophys J. 2012 Nov 7;103(9):1890-8. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2012.09.011. PMID: 23199917
- Boyle S, Kolin DL, Bieler JG, Schneck JP, Wiseman PW, Edidin M. Quantum dot fluorescence characterizes the nanoscale organization of T cell receptors for antigen. Biophys J. 2011 Dec 7;101(11):L57-9. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2011.10.028. PMID: 22261075
- Xiao Z, Mohamood AS, Uddin S, Gutfreund R, Nakata C, Marshall A, Kimura H, Caturegli P, Womer KL, Huang Y, Jie C, Chakravarti S, Schneck JP, Yagita H, Hamad AR. Inhibition of Fas ligand in NOD mice unmasks a protective role for IL-10 against insulitis development. Am J Pathol. 2011 Aug;179(2):725-32. doi: 10.1016/j.ajpath.2011.04.016. Epub 2011 Jun 15. PMID: 21718680
- Chiu YL, Schneck JP, Oelke M. HLA-Ig based artificial antigen presenting cells for efficient ex vivo expansion of human CTL. J Vis Exp. 2011 Apr 11;(50). pii: 2801. doi: 10.3791/2801. PMID: 21505415
- Webb TJ, Bieler JG, Schneck JP, Oelke M. Ex vivo induction and expansion of natural killer T cells by CD1d1-Ig coated artificial antigen presenting cells. J Immunol Methods. 2009 Jul 31;346(1-2):38-44. doi: 10.1016/j.jim.2009.05.003. Epub 2009 May 14. PMID: 19446558
de Melo AB, Nascimento EJ, Braga-Neto U, Dhalia R, Silva AM, Oelke M, Schneck JP, Sidney J, Sette A, Montenegro SM, Marques ET. T-cell memory responses elicited by yellow fever vaccine are targeted to overlapping epitopes containing multiple HLA-1 and -II binding motifs. PLoS Negl Trop Dis, 7(1):Jan. 31, 2013 (Epub ahead of print).
Webb TJ, Li X, Giuntoli RL 2nd, Lopez PH, Heuser C, Schnaar RL, Tsuji M, Kurts C, OelkeM, Schneck JP. Molecular identification of GD3 as a suppressor of the innate immune response in ovarian cancer. Cancer Res, 72(15):3744-52, 2012.
Lee JB, Oelke M, Ramachandra L, Canaday DH, Schneck JP. Decline of influenza-specific CD8+ T cell repertoire in healthy geriatric donors. Immun Ageing, 8(6):4-11, 2011.
