Roose Lab - Research
The Roose lab focuses on understanding cell fitness and cell fate decisions driven by cell-cell interactions and signaling pathways, in the context of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and stem cell biology. By taking a collaborative approach working with biophysicists, engineers, geneticists, and many clinicians, our team spans the gamut from fundamental to pre-clinical science. I am a recipient of multiple grants and awards including support from the NIH, foundations, philanthropy, and industry.
T cell fitness
We have contributed to the concepts of analog and digital effector kinase signaling in immune cells. Our current work focuses on mTOR fitness signals in naïve and effector T cells and P38 kinase signals in regulatory T cells, with relevance to autoimmune diseases and immuno-oncology.
Tumor cell fitness
Stem cell fitness
We focus on stem cell lineage potential with an emphasis on cues that impact stemness and lineage commitment. We combine mouse models with organoid technology to further characterize the role of the supporting stem cell niche, stem cell – immune cell crosstalk.
Roose lab - Organoids
In 2018, I founded an Organoid disease to biology Core connected to UCSF's CoLabs. We generate, characterize, and biobank classical, epithelial organoids. My lab combines these organoids in assembloids with immune cells or other host cells and aim to understand multicellular networks in healthy and diseased tissue. In those combinations of organoids we are now applying various bioengineering approaches to bring cells in proximity and study cell-cell communication.