L. Robert Peters
e-mail address: larryrob@umich.edu

Mentor: Malini Raghavan, PhD

Research Description

Traditionally apoptotic cells are considered strongly immunosuppressive. Recent studies from Dr. Guido Kroemer’s group used a mouse model of cancer chemotherapy to show that under certain circumstances cell death can be immunogenic, and that certain kinds of “pre-apoptotic” cancer cells can induce protective and therapeutic, anti-tumor immune responses in mice. They showed that different levels of the ER-resident, protein folding chaperone, calreticulin are translocated to the surface of dying cells by different cell death inducers. The immunogenicity of cell death required relatively high levels of calreticulin on the cell surface. I am interested in a) how calreticulin-high dying cells stimulate the immune response; b) what other signals are differentially expressed on dying or stressed cells and the functional consequences of these changes; and c) how the stage of cell death, inducer of cell death, and type of dying cell differentially affect the immune system.

Publications

Malini Raghavan, Natasha Del Cid, Syed Monem Rizvi and Larry Robert Peters. 2008. MHC class I assembly: out and about. Trends in Immunology. Volume 29, Issue 9, September 2008, Pages 436-443.

Abstracts

L. Robert Peters, Vilasack Thammavongsa, and Malini Raghavan: Assembly, stability, and intracellular trafficking of HLA-B2705 in the presence and absence of tapasin. Autumn Immunology Conference, 2006.

L. Robert Peters, Raghavan, Malini: Calreticulun's translocation to the surface of apoptotic cells. 8th Annual International Calreticulun Workshop, Vina Del Mar, Chile 2009.

Awards

Monte V. Hobbs Student Award

CBTP training grant fellowship