Category: Uncategorized


Happy Graduation to Dr. Mehdi Chaib, PhD – Commencement 2022

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Mehdi Chaib, PhD (@ChaibImmune) has completed his doctoral studies in the Makowski lab and has joined the lab of Jim Allison, PhD at MD Anderson to complete his post-doctoral studies.

UTHSC-led team receives $5.2 million for study of link between obesity – Press release from UTHSC for our new U01 grant!

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Congratulations to Dr. Mehdi Chaib, Ph.D.

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5/11/2022- Mehdi Chaib successfully defended his thesis entitled “Targeting Myeloid Protein Kinase C Signaling to Overcome Immune Suppression and Improve Immunotherapy in Cancer”. We can’t wait to see you walk in August!

Press release is out for our new R01 to study breast cancer genetics

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UTHSC Team Receives $2 Million For Breast Cancer Genetics Research

Makowski lab receives R01 from NCI to study genetic variants in breast cancer.

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We are happy to announce that Liza Makowski was awarded an R01 from the NCI which scored a 2%. The proposal is entitled “Determining susceptibility loci in triple negative breast cancer using a novel pre-clinical model.” Co-investigators Drs. Rob Williams, Lu Lu, D. Neil Hayes, and David Ashbrook at UTHSC and Dr. Carey Anders at… Read More

Mehdi Chaib awarded F31NRSA Pre-doctoral Fellowship award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI)

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Mehdi Chaib, graduate student in Makowski Lab, was awarded a 3 year F31 predoctoral NRSA fellowship from the NCI in Dec of 2021. His proposal entitled “PKC agonism restricts innate immune suppression and promotes antigen cross-presentation in Triple Negative Breast Cancer” scored a 3%. We are so proud of him! Congratulations!

Excited to share our new manuscript led by Mehdi Chaib in Cancer Letters on PKC agonism

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Makowski lab graduate student Mehdi Chaib has published “PKC agonism restricts innate immune suppression, promotes antigen cross-presentation and synergizes with agonistic CD40 antibody therapy to activate CD8 + T cells in breast cancer” in Cancer Letters (here). Congratulations Mehdi! Highlights: •PKC agonism suppresses murine breast cancer tumor growth in vivo. •PKC agonism impairs MDSC expansion, trafficking, and suppressive… Read More

Laura Sipe awarded F32 NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI)

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Dr. Sipe, a postdoctoral fellow in the Makowski Lab, was awarded an F32 postdoctoral fellowship award from the NCI entitled “The role of bile acids to ameliorate obesity driven triple negative breast cancer.” Congratulations Laura! We are so proud.

Medhi Chaib invited to speak at AACR2021

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Makowski lab graduate student @MehdiChaib was invited to give an oral presentation and poster on his project about reprogramming the immunosuppressive microenvironment in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in the Mini symposia session Identifying the puppet master cells that orchestrate the tumor microenvironment at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2021 annual meeting. Congrats Mehdi! 

Laura Sipe presenting AACR-funded project on identifying genetic modifiers of TNBC

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Makowski lab postdoctoral fellow Dr. Laura Sipe @LauraSipe3 presented her poster on using the BXD recombinant inbred model to identify genetic modifiers of triple negative breast cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2021 annual meeting. Congrats Laura!