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Research


The goal of the Humphries lab is to elucidate how metabolic pathways can regulate key mediators of cell death and inflammatory responses elicited by our innate immune system.

Metabolic regulation of cell death pathways
A key goal of our lab is to understand how the oncometabolite fumarate can regulate diverse forms of cell death. Our future work will be focused on how subversion of cell death by fumarate can regulate tumorigenesis and neuroinflammation.

Mitochondrial reprogramming of Inflammaging and rejuvenation
A new exciting and innovative area in our lab is to uncover how we can reprogram our mitochondria to reverse the aging process and promote rejuvenation through targeted inhibition of inflammatory pathways that govern the aging process. By leveraging our understanding of mitochondrial proteases and harnessing their proteolytic activity we aim to develop new therapeutics for the treatment of age-related inflammatory disorders and neurodegeneration. 

Metabolic Control of SARS-Cov2 infection
Like all inflammatory pathways viral infections trigger metabolic changes in immune cells which can aid and abet viral replication. SARS-CoV2 continues to be a global health problem with new and more transmissible variants continuing to emerge. By studying how SARS-Cov2 infection shapes mitochondrial metabolism and interacts with mitochondrial proteins we aim to identify new strategies for limiting viral replication and treatments for severe COVID-19. Our lab is fully equipped and trained to perform in vitro and in vivo experiments in the BSL3 containment facility at UMass Chan medical school. Our work to date has identified new regulators of SARS-CoV2 infection and we have developed a novel immunotherapy for preventing severe COVID-19.

Therapeutic targeting of innate immune signaling pathways
Our lab has a strong focus on translating our findings into novel therapeutics to treat immune mediated diseases. In line with our other goals, we aim to leverage our findings into new drug modalities for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, cancer and neurodegeneration.