Roarke Kamber, PhD

My research interests center on understanding how macrophages detect and eliminate disease-causing cells, including cancer cells, and determining why this homeostatic process fails in aging and disease. To this end, my research encompasses questions in immunology and cancer biology, and leverages a wide range of experimental approaches including genome-wide CRISPR screens, live-cell imaging, biochemical reconstitution, and animal models. We aim to systematically map the inter-cellular signaling axes between macrophages and their target cells that govern phagocytosis, with a particular focus on defining the roles of uncharacterized genes and metabolites in this process. These discovery-based efforts will allow us to understand how macrophages make the all-or-none decision to destroy another cell, to characterize pathological failure modes, and to engineer innate immune cells with enhanced therapeutic properties. The ultimate goal of my research program is to uncover fundamental biological insights that enable next-generation immunotherapies for currently untreatable diseases.