{"id":354804,"date":"2025-12-19T05:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T05:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/354804\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T05:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T05:18:12","slug":"immunologist-yi-tsang-lee-wins-prestigious-irvington-postdoctoral-award-lji-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/354804\/","title":{"rendered":"Immunologist Yi-Tsang Lee wins prestigious Irvington Postdoctoral Award \u2013 lji.org"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LA JOLLA, CA\u2014Postdoctoral Fellow Yi-Tsang Lee, Ph.D., of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/labs\/hogan-lab\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hogan Lab<\/a> at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), will receive the Cancer Research Institute\u2019s prestigious <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cancerresearch.org\/cri-irvington-postdoctoral-fellowship\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship<\/a>. This three-year, $243,000 fellowship will fund innovative new research to improve cancer immunotherapies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis fellowship is an incredible honor,\u201d says Lee. \u201cMy goal with this project is to improve immunotherapy efficiency in solid tumors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cancer immunotherapies harness some of the body\u2019s best fighters, called CD8+ T cells, to kill tumor cells. Unfortunately, when T cells enter a tumor, they can develop a problem called T cell \u201cexhaustion\u201d and stop working.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo destroy a tumor, you need immune cells to keep fighting tumors relentlessly,\u201d says Lee. \u201cT cells are important because they can enter tumors. The challenge is that when T cells receive constant stimulation from tumor cells, they can become exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lee wants to help scientists counteract T cell exhaustion. His new project will focus on NFAT, a protein that directs how T cells do their jobs.<\/p>\n<p>NFAT is a transcription factor, which means it controls gene expression in cells. NFAT is especially important during the process of T cell activation, when the cell is gearing up to fight a threat.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s another side to NFAT. In previous studies, LJI Professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/labs\/hogan-lab\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Hogan, Ph.D.<\/a>, and LJI Professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/labs\/rao-lab\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anjana Rao, Ph.D.<\/a>, have shown that NFAT appears to also cause T cell exhaustion when it interacts with certain other cellular proteins.<\/p>\n<p>Lee aims to develop a new tool \u2014 an advance in a method called ChIP-seq \u2014 to learn more about how NFAT engages these partner proteins. This new tool may help reveal where the complexes formed by NFAT and other proteins bind on the genome and how they drive T-cell exhaustion.<\/p>\n<p>Uncovering these key molecular details could lead to therapies to help counteract T cell exhaustion. Lee also emphasizes the importance of zooming in to transcription factors to understand the molecular mechanisms behind many other diseases. \u201cWe can make improvements to ChIP-seq to look at specific transcription factors complexes,\u201d says Lee.<\/p>\n<p>The<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cancerresearch.org\/cri-irvington-postdoctoral-fellowship\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship Program<\/a> is one of the most prestigious opportunities available for immunologists and cancer researchers. Through the program, early career scientists receive resources, mentorship, and professional development to help launch their careers as independent researchers. In 2024, LJI Postdoctoral Fellow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/blog\/postdoctoral-fellow-rachel-helms-ph-d-awarded-2024-cri-irvington-postdoctoral-fellowship\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Helms, Ph.D.<\/a>, won the fellowship to support her cutting-edge research in the Rao Lab.<\/p>\n<p>Learn more:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/research\/research-centers\/center-for-cancer-immunotherapy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">LJI Center for Cancer Immunotherapy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lji.org\/news-events\/news\/post\/preparing-t-cells-for-the-long-haul\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Preparing T cells for the long haul<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA JOLLA, CA\u2014Postdoctoral Fellow Yi-Tsang Lee, Ph.D., of the Hogan Lab at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI),&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-354804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}