I am a physician scientist known for my work in breast cancer tumor biology and immunology. My focus is on understanding the tumor immune microenvironment to improve the efficacy of novel therapeutics such as immunotherapy. My research program is two pronged; my bench research utilizes mouse models of primary and metastatic breast cancer to understand how the tumor microenvironment (TME) contributes to mechanisms of response to novel combinations of immune checkpoint inhibition. My lab conducts experiments in immunology, molecular biology and tumor biology and incorporates single cell RNA sequencing and other high throughput technologies to answer biologic questions. My translational research is dedicated to investigation of how the immune suppressive TME affects response or potential for response in patients. I utilize tumor specimens and blood obtained from patients enrolled in both therapeutic and non-therapeutic clinical trials for these studies. My goal is to use my preclinical findings to inform correlative analyses to do ‘science in patients’ and let the biological findings from both mouse and human studies feed hypothesis-driven work. I am not only passionately committed to a career in basic science but also capable of developing and following through on research plans. My lab has uncovered the importance of modulating immature myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) within the primary breast TME following treatment with the histone deacetylase inhibitor entinostat in combination with checkpoint inhibitors anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4. We showed that decreased suppression of MDSCs has led to improved response rates to checkpoint inhibition (Christmas et al. CIR 2018) and in a parallel clinical trial NCI/CTEP-9844 confirmed the potential benefit of this drug combination in patients (Roussos Torres et al. CCR 2021). We have since begun to unravel the mechanism of immunosuppressive signaling in MDSCs following treatment with entinostat and how this facilitates a robust response to checkpoint inhibition. We are also in the process of investigating newly identified targets on M2 macrophages and dendritic cells, also implicated from our preclinical studies in mouse models (Sidiropoulos et al. CIR, In Press). We are currently in the midst of numerous correlative analysis of a breast expansion cohort from our clinical trial (Presented ESMO, 9/2021) which includes evaluation of human tissue by imaging mass cytometry, RNA sequencing, TCR sequencing, and immunohistochemistry to investigate MDSCs and macrophages. Research questions in my lab will continue to be driven by findings from our preclinical studies which serve as a guide for translation of novel discoveries.