Jessalyn Ubellacker, M.D, Ph.D.

Research

My research will seek to understand how lymph nodes offer a protective environment that can foster cancer progression. Metastatic cancers often spread first to lymph nodes, an event that is associated with poor overall prognosis. As a postdoctoral fellow, I discovered that lymph nodes are enriched with a lipid that allows cancers to avoid ferroptosis—a cell death process resulting from lipid oxidation. Now, using advanced techniques in cell and molecular immunology, biochemistry, and pharmacology, my lab will work to induce ferroptosis using small molecules in the lymph nodes of mouse models of metastatic cancer. We will work to determine the extent to which this may be able to evoke an anti-cancer immune response to inhibit cancer progression. Our findings could uncover novel vulnerabilities for early-stage cancer, as well as disseminated metastases.