View Statement of Purpose
I'm interested in glycoscience and the interactivity space of glycans in a tumor microenvironment. Particularly, I'm motivated to study how cancer therapeutics can impact the distribution and dynamics of pro-tumor contributors – and I'm excited about curiosity-driven science that can help iteratively degrade adversarial expressions of cellular matter or otherwise modify the phenotypic behaviors of immune cells.
Cancer cells evolve to evade destruction, even while expressing factors that can lead to detection by leukocytes. Scheming to fool our immune system at every turn by upregulating the production of certain ligands, evolved cancer cells create a microenvironment around their extracellular matrix that consists of various components that aid with the inhibition of an appropriate immune response.I strongly enjoy a style of research where we can learn about the behavior of these upregulated ligands, exhaustively study their underlying interactions, and design therapeutics using novel chemistries intended for delivering a higher quality of patient care and outcomes.