Michael Rosenblum, MD, PhD

The central focus of my lab is to understand how immune responses are regulated in tissues and how this knowledge can be exploited for therapeutic benefit. To this end, we currently have two areas of active investigation:

1. Understanding how regulatory T cells (Tregs) control immune responses in tissues
2. Understanding the ‘alternative’ functions of Tregs in tissues

Approach
Because of its complex immunological properties, its accessibility, and potential for clinical translation, the skin is the model peripheral tissue that we currently study. Approximately 50% of our research employs a reductionist approach, utilizing transgenic animal models to ask fundamental questions of how the immune system functions in skin at both the cellular and molecular levels. The other half of our work focuses on doing functional immunology with human skin, human blood and humanized mice.