Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

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LSP | Inflammation in Disease

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Inflammation in Disease

LSP investigators study the causes and consequences of inflammation in various diseases.

Inflammation is a tightly regulated biological response that orchestrates the recruitment of immune and stromal cells to sites of injury or infection. Under normal conditions, the inflammatory response is short-lived and resolves once the insult has been cleared. However, if the inflammation fails to resolve appropriately, it can become chronic and contribute to a range of diseases. While the role of inflammation in autoimmune conditions is well-understood, low-grade chronic inflammation also plays a role in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and chronic pain.

Investigators at the LSP use preclinical methods to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of inflammation in disease. Recent work has used spatial imaging and transcriptomics to reveal the complex immune dysregulation in ovarian precancer, identified a potential pro-inflammatory biomarker for neuroinflammation, and linked unique inflammatory profiles to different types of pain. These studies aim to define disease-specific inflammatory signatures, enabling targeted therapies to modulate pathological inflammation without broadly suppressing immune function.

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Featured Publications

Multimodal Spatial Profiling Reveals Immune Suppression and Microenvironment Remodeling in Fallopian Tube Precursors to High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma

Kader et al.

Cancer Discovery. 2025 June 3. PMID: 39704522.

Nociceptor-immune interactomes reveal insult-specific immune signatures of pain

Jain et al.

Nat Immunol. 2024 May 28. PMCID: PMC11224023

Related Publications

  1. Girnius, N., Vallius, T., Chen, W., Launonen, I.-M., Palomino-Echeverria, S., Lin, J.-R., Mills, C. E., Kauppila, S., Kronqvist, P., Ellonen, A., Perala, M., Withnell, E., Chen, Y.-A., Secrier, M., Santagata, S., Sorger, P. K., & Farkkila, A. (2025). Integrative single-cell and spatial mapping of oxidative stress response uncovers GCLC+ mesenchymal tumor cell state linked with favorable outcomes in triple negative breast cancer. bioRxiv.
  2. Williams, J. B., Pant, S. M., Kley, A. L., Rajmalani, B. A., Yapp, C., Zhang, J., Rotrosen, E., Sales, A., Sorger, P. K., & Kupper, T. S. (2025). Regulatory T cells inhibit CD8+ TRM-like cells during the early stages of tumor immune escape. bioRxiv.
  3. Yapp, C., Nirmal, A. J., Zhou, F., Wong, A. Y. H., Tefft, J. B., Lu, Y. D., Shang, Z., Maliga, Z., Llopis, P. M., Murphy, G. F., Lian, C. G., Danuser, G., Santagata, S., & Sorger, P. K. (2025). Highly multiplexed 3D profiling of cell states and immune niches in human tumors. Nature Methods.
  4. Jain, Y., Jepson, J., Chen, R., Maier, E., Herr, B. W., Puig-Barbe, A., Quardokus, E. M., Qaurooni, D., Yapp, C., Ewing, S. L., Enninful, A., Farzad, N., Bueckle, A., Easter, Q. T., Matuck, B., Zhu, C., Monte, E. M., Purkerson, J. M., Jehrio, M., … Börner, K. (2025). Exploring endothelial cell environments across organs in spatially resolved omics data. bioRxiv.
  5. Vallius, T., Shi, Y., Novikov, E., Pant, S. M., Pelletier, R., Chen, Y.-A., Tefft, J. B., Johnson, A. N., Maliga, Z., Wan, G., Murphy, G., Santagata, S., Semenov, Y. R., Liu, D., Lian, C. G., & Sorger, P. K. (2025). Spatial determinants of tumor cell dedifferentiation and plasticity in primary cutaneous melanoma. bioRxiv.
  6. Smith, N. P., Yan, Y., Pan, Y., Williams, J. B., Manakongtreecheep, K., Pant, S. M., Zhao, J., Tian, T., Pan, T., Stingley, C., Wu, K., Zhang, J., Kley, A. L., Sorger, P. K., Villani, A.-C., & Kupper, T. S. (2025). Resident memory T cell development is gradual and shows AP-1 gene expression in mature cells. JCI Insight, 10(12), e187381.
  7. Kader, T., Lin, J.-R., Hug, C. B., Coy, S., Chen, Y.-A., de Bruijn, I., Shih, N., Jung, E., Pelletier, R. J., Lopez Leon, M., Mingo, G., Omran, D. K., Lee, J. S., Yapp, C., Satravada, B. A., Kundra, R., Xu, Y., Chan, S., Tefft, J. B., … Santagata, S. (2025). Multimodal Spatial Profiling Reveals Immune Suppression and Microenvironment Remodeling in Fallopian Tube Precursors to High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma. Cancer Discovery, 15(6), 1180–1202.
  8. Jain, N., Ogbonna, E. C., Maliga, Z., Jacobson, C., Zhang, L., Shih, A., Rosenberg, J., Kalam, H., Gagné, A., Solomon, I. H., Santagata, S., Sorger, P. K., Aldridge, B. B., & Martinot, A. J. (2025). Multiomic analysis identifies suppressive myeloid cell populations in human TB granulomas. bioRxiv.
  9. Mollaoglu, G., Tepper, A., Falcomatà, C., Potak, H. T., Pia, L., Amabile, A., Mateus-Tique, J., Rabinovich, N., Park, M. D., LaMarche, N. M., Brody, R., Browning, L., Lin, J.-R., Zamarin, D., Sorger, P. K., Santagata, S., Merad, M., Baccarini, A., & Brown, B. D. (2024). Ovarian cancer-derived IL-4 promotes immunotherapy resistance. Cell, 187(26), 7492-7510.e22.
  10. Yu, W.-W., Barrett, J. N. P., Tong, J., Lin, M.-J., Marohn, M., Devlin, J. C., Herrera, A., Remark, J., Levine, J., Liu, P.-K., Fang, V., Zellmer, A. M., Oldridge, D. A., Wherry, E. J., Lin, J.-R., Chen, J.-Y., Sorger, P., Santagata, S., Krueger, J. G., … Lu, C. P. (2024). Skin immune-mesenchymal interplay within tertiary lymphoid structures promotes autoimmunepathogenesis in hidradenitis suppurativa. Immunity, 57(12), 2827-2842.e5.
  11. König, L. E., Rodriguez, S., Hug, C., Daneshvari, S., Chung, A., Bradshaw, G. A., Sahin, A., Zhou, G., Eisert, R. J., Piccioni, F., Das, S., Kalocsay, M., Sokolov, A., Sorger, P., Root, D. E., & Albers, M. W. (2024). TYK2 as a novel therapeutic target in Alzheimer’s Disease with TDP-43 inclusions. bioRxiv.
  12. Park, J. H., Mortaja, M., Son, H. G., Zhao, X., Sloat, L. M., Azin, M., Wang, J., Collier, M. R., Tummala, K. S., Mandinova, A., Bardeesy, N., Semenov, Y. R., Mino-Kenudson, M., & Demehri, S. (2024). Statin prevents cancer development in chronic inflammation by blocking interleukin 33 expression. Nature Communications, 15(1), 4099.
  13. Jain, A., Gyori, B. M., Hakim, S., Jain, A., Sun, L., Petrova, V., Bhuiyan, S. A., Zhen, S., Wang, Q., Kawaguchi, R., Bunga, S., Taub, D. G., Ruiz-Cantero, M. C., Tong-Li, C., Andrews, N., Kotoda, M., Renthal, W., Sorger, P. K., & Woolf, C. J. (2024). Nociceptor-immune interactomes reveal insult-specific immune signatures of pain. Nature Immunology.
  14. Marques, C., Held, A., Dorfman, K., Sung, J., Song, C., Kavuturu, A. S., Aguilar, C., Russo, T., Oakley, D. H., Albers, M. W., Hyman, B. T., Petrucelli, L., Lagier-Tourenne, C., & Wainger, B. J. (2024). Neuronal STING activation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Acta Neuropathologica, 147(1), 56.
  15. Coy, S., Cheng, B., Lee, J. S., Rashid, R., Browning, L., Xu, Y., Chakrabarty, S. S., Yapp, C., Chan, S., Tefft, J. B., Scott, E., Spektor, A., Ligon, K. L., Baker, G. J., Pellman, D., Sorger, P. K., & Santagata, S. (2023). 2D and 3