We explore how disturbances in the immune defense and environmental factors such as bacterial toxins and metabolites drive chronic skin inflammation and cancer.

Our primary interests are skin inflammation and cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL), which is characterized by the presence of malignant T cells in chronically inflamed skin. We focus on inflammatory skin responses, cytokine signaling, novel oncogenic pathways, crosstalk between malignant and non-malignant skin cells, and how bacterial product/metabolites/toxins and xenobiotics fuel skin chronic inflammation, malignant transformation and disease progression (c.f. below).

We integrate studies on inflammation and disease models using in vitro and ex vivo models, artificial 3D skin, and animal models to study transcriptional and translational regulation, gene expression profiling, miRNAs, cytokine expression, signaling and cellular interaction involving immune cells, keratinocytes, stromal cells and cancer cells and how such interactions are influenced by bacteria and their toxins and metabolic products as well as xenobiotics.