- Ph.D. - University of Pittsburgh (2016)
- B.S. - Bucknell University (2010)
Education & Training
Cillo AR, Mukherjee E, Daley J, Onkar S, Li X, Liu D, Vignali DAA, Bruno TC, and Bailey KM. The immune landscape of primary and recurrent adolescent and young adult bone sarcomas. Clinical Cancer Research. 2022 Sep 8:CCR-22-1471. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-22-1471.
Cillo AR, Somasundaram A, Shan F, Cardello C, Workman CJ, Kitsios GD, Ruffin A, Kunning S, Lampenfeld C, Onkar S, Grebinoski S, Deshmukh G, Methe B, Liu C, Nambulli S, Andrews L, Duprex WP, Joglekar AV, Benos PV, Ray P, Ray A, McVerry BJ, Zhang Y, Lee JS, Das J, Singh H, Morris A, Bruno TC, Vignali DAA. People critically ill with COVID-19 exhibit peripheral immune profiles predictive of mortality and reflective of SARS-CoV-2 lung viral burden. Cell Reports Medicine. 2021 Dec 2;100476. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2021.100476. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
Ruffin AT#, Cillo AR#, Tabib T, Liu A, Onkar S, Kunning SR, Lampenfeld C, Atiya HI, Abecassis I, Kürten CHL, Qi Z, Soose R, Duvvuri U, Kim S, Oesterrich S, Lafyatis R, Coffman LG, Ferris RL, Vignali DAA, Bruno TC. B cell signatures and tertiary lymphoid structures contribute to outcome in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Nature Communications. 2021 Jun 7;12(1):3349.
#, co-first authors
Cillo AR, Kürten CHL, Tabib T, Qi Z, Onkar S, Wang T, Liu A, Duvvuri U, Kim S, Soose RJ, Oesterreich S, Chen W, Lafyatis R, Bruno TC, Ferris RL, Vignali DAA. Immune landscape of viral- and carcinogen-driven head and neck cancer. Immunity. 2020 Jan 14;52(1):183-199.
Our research group focuses on understanding how immune cells make cell fate decisions, how intercellular communication influences these cell fate decisions, and the ways in which cell-cell interactions shape community dynamics in the tumor microenvironment. We address these questions in three major ways:
i) Computational approaches: developing, validating, and implementing computational tools to study cell-type specific drivers of differentiation and intercellular communication in vitro and in vivo;
ii) Mechanistic models: development of in vitro models focused on dissecting specific aspects of cellular differentiation and intercellular communication;
iii) Translational studies: applying high-dimensional approaches including spectral flow cytometry, single-cell multi-omics and spatial transcriptomics as part of translational studies in patients with solid tumors.
Through the approaches described above, we are defining the contributions of individual immune populations to antitumor immunity as well as their aggregate behavior within the tumor microenvironment. Better understanding the individual and community dynamics of immune populations will allow us to dissect why current immunotherapies fail in some patients and it will enable identification of new therapeutic strategies to promote antitumor immunity.