Odette Cancer Program

Administrative assistant: Cassandra Cheng
Phone: 416-480-6100 ext. 63537
Email: cassandra.cheng@sunnybrook.ca

Education:

• B.Sc. Honours, 2004, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• PhD, 2011, Immunology, University of Toronto, Canada
• Postdoctoral fellow, 2012, Immunology, University of Toronto, Canada
• Postdoctoral fellow, 2016, Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA

Appointments and Affiliations:

• 2020-present, Scientist, Biological Platforms, Odette Cancer Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• 2020-present, Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology, University of Toronto
• 2019-2020, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

Research Foci:

• Neuro-immune crosstalk in neurological disorders
• Transcriptomic and epigenomic regulation of cellular metabolic network

Research Summary:

The immune system plays a dynamic role in supporting brain function and dysfunction. My lab focuses on understanding the regulation of immune cell function in specific brain niches at steady state and during the progression of neurological disorders such as neurodegeneration and major depression.

Metabolism provides a critical link between environment and host genetics. We take systems and cell biology approaches to investigate metabolic circuitry and its connection with epigenome and transcriptome regulation of immune cells with consequences in their function.

The Wang lab is interested in clinically relevant research and strives to create a highly collaborative environment for training multidisciplinary scientists at all levels.

Selected Publications:

See current publications list.

1. Lee KW, Profant M, Wang C. Metabolic sex dimorphism of the brain at the gene, cell and tissue level. Journal of Immunology. 2022. 208(2): 212-220. PMID: 35017210.
2. Thangavelu G, Wang C, loschi M, Saha A … Noelle RJ, Blazar BR. Repurposing a novel-anti-cancer RXR agonist to attenuate murine acute GVHD and maintain graft-versus-leukemia responses. Blood. 2021. 137(8): 1090-1103. PMID: 32976550.
3. Wagner A^*, Wang C^*&, Fessler J, DeTomaso D, Avila-Pacheco J, Kaminski J, Zaghouani S, Christian E, Thakore P, Akama-Garren E, Pierce K, Singh V, Douglas VP, Bod L, Schnell A, Sobel RA, Ron-Harel N, Haigis M, Puleston D, Pearce E, Soleimani M, Clish C, Regev A, Kuchroo VK^#&, & Yosef N^#&. Metabolic Modeling of Single Th17 Cells Reveals Regulators of Autoimmunity. Cell. 2021. 184(16): 4168-4185. PMID: 34216539. *Joint first authors &Joint corresponding authors
4. Puleston DJ, Baixauli F, Sanin DE, Edwards-Hicks J, Villa M, Kabat AM, Kaminski MM, Stanckzak M, Weiss HJ, Grzes KM, Piletic K, Field CS, Corrado M, Haessler F, Wang C, Musa Y, Schimmelpfennig L, … Pearce EL. Polyamine metabolism is a central determinant of helper T cell lineage fidelity. Cell. 2021 184 (16): 4186-4202. PMID: 34216540.
5. Sangnak W, Wagner A, Kowalczyk MS, Bod L, Kye YC, Sage PT, Sharpe AH, Sobel RA, Quintana FJ, Rozenblatt-Rosen O, Regev A, Wang C, Yosef, Kuchroo VK. T Follicular Regulatory Cell–Derived Fibrinogen-like Protein 2 Regulates Production of Autoantibodies and Induction of Systemic Autoimmunity. .Journal of Immunology. 2020. 205(12): 3247. PMID: 33168576.
6. Sangnak W, Wang C, Kuchroo vk. Multilayer regulation of CD4 T cell subset differentiation in the era of single cell genomics. Advances in Immunology. 2019. January 3.
7. Chihara N, Madi A, Kondo T, Zhang H, Acharya N, Singer M, Nyman J, Marjanovic ND, Kowalczyk MS, Wang C, Kurtulus S, Law T, Etminan Y, Nevin J, Buckley CD, Burkett PR, Buenrostro JD, Rozenblatt-Rosen O, Anderson AC, Regev A, Kuchroo VK. Induction and transcriptional regulation of the co-inhibitory gene module in T cells. Nature. 2018.7. 558 (7710): 454-459. PMID: 29899446.
8. Wang C, Singer M, Anderson AC. Molecular Dissection of CD8+ T-cell dysfunction. Trends in Immunology. 2017. PMID: 28662970
9. Singer M*, Wang C*, Cong L, Marjanovic ND, Kowalczyk MS, Zhang HY, Nyman J, Sakuishi K, Kurtulus S, Gennert D, Xia J, Kwon JYH, Nevin J, Herbst RH, Yanai I, Rozenblatt-Rosen O, Kuchroo VK⁺, Regev A⁺. Anderson AC⁺ A distinct gene module uncouples dysfunction from activation in tumor-infiltrating T cells. Cell. 2016. 2016. 166(6): 1500. PMID: 27610572. *Joint first authors
10. Wang C, Yosef N, Gaublomme J, Wu C, Lee Y, Clish C, Kaminski J, Xiao S, Zu Horste GM, Pawlak M, Kishi Y, Karwacz K, Zhu C, Ordovas M, Madi A, Wortman I, Miyazaki T, Sobel RA, Park H, Regev A Kuchroo VK. CD5L/AIM regulates lipid biosynthesis and restrains Th17 cell pathogenicity. Cell. 2015. 163(6): 1413. PMID: 26607793.