Most cancers are more common and more deadly in men; however, cancer therapies are more toxic in women. This project will explore the idea that immune cells themselves convert androgen precursors into bioactive hormones to maintain homeostasis and then interrogate the impact of androgens on T cell function.
Dr. Moran started her research journey at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston where she learned of the joys of conducting translational cancer research. She then earned her PhD in Microbiology, Cancer Biology and Immunology from the University of Minnesota where her work revealed how T cell receptor signal strength was critical for lineage fate decisions during development. She joined the department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology at Oregon Health & Science University in May of 2017 where she is currently an Associate Professor. Today, her research focuses on how androgens regulate multiple aspects of T cell biology. Her group utilizes a variety of tools to interrogate fundamental and translational questions with a common goal of rapidly moving benchtop discoveries back to the clinic. To meet this goal, she partners with clinicians and computational biologists, trains graduate students and postdocs and collaborates across multiple disciplines to improve clinical outcomes for cancer patients.