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We are currently accepting graduate students and postdocs to join our lab!
Please contact us if you are interested in joining our team.
Lab News
Congratulations to our graduate student Jessie Hem, who has received the UNC Integrated Translational Oncology Program (iTOP) research training award!
Congratulations, Coral Del Mar Alicea Pauneto, PhD!
Dr. Coral Del Mar Alicea Pauneto has defended her dissertation titled "Defining the impact of chronic ATF4 signaling on CD8+ T cells in the tumor microenvironment."
Andrew has received one of the 2025 Graduate Fellow Awards in Basic Science! Congratuations, Andrew!
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Check out the current issue of Cell Biology & Physiology "In the Loop" magazine, where the cover photo is an OPAL image from the Thaxton lab linking hypoxic regions of solid tumor to ER stress. Thanks to the Pathology Services Core for their collaboration in obtaining these novel images.
Welcome, Jessie!
Jessica Hem joins the Thaxton lab as a BBSP student pursuing her PhD. We are excited to have her join our incredible team.
Coral receives the Department of Pharmacology Scholar Award! This award is given to the graduate student in the Department of Pharmacology who has gone above and beyond to advocate science, the department, and helping others. Congratulations Coral, this award is well-deserved!
Andrew Kennedy, graduate student in the Thaxton lab, has won a UNC Lineberger Travel Award for his abstract selected for the Immune Engineering section of the 2024 SITC Annual Meeting. This award is part of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) initiative. Congrats, Andrew!
Welcome, Annaleigh!
Annaleigh Powell, PhD, joins the Thaxton lab as part of the Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in Research and Education (SPIRE) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Congratulations and welcome, Annaleigh!
The Thaxton lab has published their new paper titled "Acetyl-CoA carboxylase obstructs CD8+ T cell lipid utilization in the tumor microenvironment" in Cell Metabolism! Check it out here.
Graduate student Ellie Hunt won an Abstract Award at the 2024 SITC Spring Scientific. Congratulations, Ellie!
Andrew talks about his love for microscopy in an interview with UNC Newsroom titled "Five Questions with Andrew Scott Kennedy Jr." You can read the Vital Signs article here!
A big congratuations to Jess and Coral for being awarded an NCI Diversity Supplement for Coral's work studying ATF4 as a driver of T cell inefficacy in tumors!
Brian has been accepted into the Postdoc Technology Transfer Internship program offered by Innovate Carolina's Technology Commercialization Office. Congrats, Brian!
Thaxton Lab wins Paper of the Year in the Department of Cell Biology & Physiology at UNC Chapel Hill
Thaxton lab receives Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Tier 2 Innovation Award in collaboration with the lab of Johnathan Serody, MD to study protein stress in CAR T cells
Brian Riesenberg's paper titled "Stress-Mediated Attenuation of Translation Undermines T-cell Activity in Cancer" accepted in Cancer Research, December 2022
Check out the latest article from UNC Health Newsroom about the Thaxton Lab's latest endeavors studying cancer immunotherapy!
The lab of Dr. Jennifer Guerriero's recent R01 award has been promoted to an R37 MERIT award. Congratulations to her team on this tremendous accomplishment!
Congratulations to graduate student Ellie Hunt for the acceptance of her paper titled "The ER-mitochondria Interface as a Dynamic Hub for T Cell Efficacy in Solid Tumors" in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology!
Welcome, Evelyn!
Evelyn Gandy graduated UNC in May 2022 where she majored in Psychology and minored in Biology and Chemistry while volunteering in the Thaxton Lab. We are excited that she has recently joined our team full-time as a Research Technician!
The Thaxton lab has joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill!
We are excited to join the team of dedicated researchers in the cancer immunotherapy group in Marsico Hall.
A big congratulations to Dr. Kristen Wallace for her recent publication in Cancer Prevention Research titled "Immune Responses Vary in Preinvasive Colorectal Lesions by Tumor Location and Histology."
Click here to read more about Dr. Wallace's figure that made it on to the cover of this issue!
Congratulations to Guillermo Rangle-Rivera, PhD candidate, on his recent publication titled "Fundamentals of T Cell Metabolism and Strategies to Enhance Cancer Immunotherapy" in Frontiers in Immunology!
Aubrey Smith, PhD candidate, has a paper in press in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer titled "B cells imprint adoptively transferred CD8+ T cells with enhanced tumor immunity." Congratulations Aubrey!
Congratulations to the lab of Dr. Jennifer Guerriero on publishing their paper in Nature Cancer titled "Targeting Immunosuppressive macrophages overcomes PARP inhibitor resistance in BRCA1-associated triple-negative breast cancer"!
Two R01 grants have been awarded by NCI/NIH to the Thaxton lab in 2020 as part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative on Immunometabolism!
1RO1CA348359-010: 4/01/2020 - 03/31/2025
Exploitation of ER Stress Induced Immune Dysfunction to Improve Cancer Immunotherapy
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1R01CA244361-01A1: 7/1/2020 - 6/30/2025
Targeting Chronic ER Stress in T-Cells to Improve Cancer Immunotherapy