Biomedical Graduate Studies

Description of Research Expertise

Research Interests
CD28 family of receptors, adoptive T cell therapy, HIV gene therapy, human T regulatory therapy.

Key words: T cell activation, Tumor Specific T cells, HIV specific T cells, expression profiles.

Research Summary
Dr. Riley’s lab studies the signals that control primary human T cell activation and function with special attention to how these manipulations can be exploited to develop T cell therapies for HIV, autoimmune disease and cancer. We are studying how to best re-direct and expand human T regulatory cells for use in the treatment of autoimmune disease. We are evaluating both the use of TCR and CARs to redirect Tregs and studying both how these methods provide antigen suppression and if these approaches alter T regulatory cell stability. Part of this research is studies to understand how altering the media by which T cells are expanded in alters their function and engraftment potential in vivo. These studies have spurred interested on how various metabolic pathways are perturb by external signaling and environment. The lab is also focused on designing HIV resistant, HIV specific T cells to be key players in the HIV Cure effort. As a leader of the BEAT HIV Martin Delaney Collaboratory his lab is evaluating ways to make T cells resistant to HIV entry and integration and developing HIV-1 specific chimeric antigen receptors to evaluate the ability of these T cells to control HIV replication in both in vitro and humanized mouse studies. Dr. Riley’s basic research findings using primary human T cells have been used as the basis and rationale for numerous Phase I adoptive T cell therapy clinical trials.

Rotation Projects
Please contact Dr. Riley concerning current rotation projects.

Lab personnel:

Gavin Ellis Ph.D. Research Associate
Xiaoling Jin, Lab Manager-Senior Research Investigator
Yuqi Zhou, Graduate Student
Mosha Deng, Graduate Student
Meidi Gu, Senior Research Investigator
Divanshu Shukla, Postdoctoral Fellow
Edmund Carvalho, Postdoctoral Fellow
David Nardo, Postdoctoral Fellow
Emileigh Maddox, Research Specialist
Shuguang Jiang, Senior Research Investigator
Max Eldabbas, Research Specialist
Lynn Chen, Research Specialist
Kevin Newcombe, PennPrep Scholar
Ryan Lim, undergraduate researcher
Cole Christopher, undergraduate researcher