About Us

The Nemenoff laboratory is focused on examining molecular pathways that regulate the progression and metastasis of lung cancer. Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths, and this is attributable, at least in part to the presence of metastases at the time of diagnosis. While work over the last 25 years has focused on regulation of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in cancer cells, it has become apparent over the last several years that cancer progression and metastasis is a complex process involving interactions between the cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME). The TME is composed of vascular cells, inflammatory cells, immune cells and fibroblasts. The goal of our research is to define these interactions and identify important pathways for lung cancer metastasis. To that end, we have developed a mouse model of lung cancer metastasis in which tumor cells are directly injected into the lungs of mice. Performing these experiments with mouse tumor cells in syngeneic mice allows us to examine cancer progression in immune competent animals. In this model, cells form a primary tumor, which over a period of several weeks metastasized to the other lobes of the lung, the mediastinal lymph nodes and distant organs, including the liver and the brain. A strength of this model is that it allows us to determine the role of specific pathways both in the tumor cells or in the TME by either silencing target genes in the cancer cells or using the appropriate knockout mice. In addition we have also developed in vitro co-culture systems to examine the molecular crosstalk between cancer cells and stromal cells, including macrophages and vascular cells. Current projects in the lab are studying the role of the complement pathway on the progression of lung adenocarcinoma, improving response rates to immunotherapy, and determining the role of cancer cell specific MHC Class II in the TME.