Ryan Park
Assistant Professor
Education & Training
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Department of GU Radiation Oncology
The Park Lab applies systems biology and mechanistic tools to discover regulators of tumor immune modulation. We aim to understand the mechanisms that govern the immune activation state of the tumor microenvironment, both at baseline and in response to cancer therapies such as radiation therapy, and we are especially interested in intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of T cell function.
Radiation therapy can activate the tumor immune microenvironment, contributing to local tumor control and, in rare cases, leading to systemic tumor regression and even cure. However, activation of a systemic anti-tumor immune response by radiation is uncommon, and radiation therapy can also induce immune suppression. Explaining this wide variation in immune modulation is a major goal of our research, with the aim of developing novel therapies to trigger durable systemic anti-tumor immune activation and improve synergy of radiation therapy with immunotherapies.
We apply novel single-cell and spatial RNA and proteomics technologies to patient samples to characterize interactions between malignant, stromal, and immune cells in both untreated and treated tumors. We use classical cell biology, biochemistry, and immunology techniques as well as functional genomics, synthetic biology, and immune cell engineering tools to discover regulators of DNA damage induced activation of innate and adaptive immune pathways and to understand the differential radiosensitivity and functionality of T cell subsets.
Students can gain expertise in T cell biology, including genetic manipulation of primary T cells and functional assays, single-cell and spatial profiling technologies, computational analysis of biological data, CRISPR screening, and mouse models of cancer.