Debolina Ganguly

Thrilled and honored to be a named a Parker Scholar! Very excited to be a part of the PICI network. Grateful for the support of my incredible mentor @JudithAgudo1 and the PICI leadership @DanaFarber

Had such a great time sharing my postdoc work and soaking in all the incredible science this week! Back to the lab feeling inspired! #AAI2026

Metastasis kills most cancer patients and grows from invisible seeds. How do these seeds escape from attack by immune cells? These seeds harness stress hormones!🤯 ⁦thanks to ⁦@nyscf⁩ ⁦@parkerici⁩ for their support. Today at ⁦@Nature⁩ nature.com/articles/s4158…

@ODonnellLab_K Congrats 🍾

I am pleased to present a new paper from my lab led by Hari Shankar Sunil showing that the transmembrane serine protease TMPRSS11B promotes an acidified tumor microenvironment and immune suppression in squamous lung cancer, OUT NOW in EMBO Reports👇: embopress.org/doi/full/10.10…

Where do cancers start? In the liver, not all cells are the same. The liver is divided into 3 “zones,” and each specializes in different metabolic tasks. We show in @Science that where a mutation occurs in a liver lobule can determine a cell’s fate. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… (1/9)

BREAKING NEWS The 2025 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”

Stellar postdoc ⁦@DebolinaGanguly⁩ and I wrote this spotlight in for a super cool paper on the systemic effects of metatasis in breast cancer. The organ of metastatic disease has a BIG impact! Highly recommended paper in ⁦@Cancer_Cell⁩ secure-web.cisco.com/1be_LDSMLB9GnZ…

@niseto @megeblad Congrats! Beautiful study!

I’m happy to share our latest work on tumour necrosis! During my time in the @megeblad lab, we found that tumour necrosis is not a passive phenomenon secondary to tumour growth, but an active phenomenon driven by neutrophils and NETs! Thread below: (1/13) nature.com/articles/s4158…

1/ 🚨 Hot off the press in @NatImmunol: CD4⁺ T cells can license Kupffer cells to rescue dysfunctional CD8⁺ T cells in the liver. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is just the proving ground—this is a paradigm shift in tissue immunity. nature.com/articles/s4159… 🧵(1/11) 2/ Chronic HBV infection was the perfect stress test: intrahepatic CD8⁺ T cells are primed yet quickly stall. How to reignite them has been a major interest of our lab. (2/11) 3/ Pre‑activated helper CD4⁺ T cells solve the puzzle. They skip lymph nodes and head straight to the liver, where they form intimate triads with Kupffer cells (KCs), the resident macrophages patrolling sinusoids. (3/11) 4/ Through CD40L‑CD40 contact, those helpers re‑program KCs—turning tolerant scavengers into potent APC‑like cytokine factories. It’s on‑site immune engineering, not remote coaching. (4/11) 5/ Licensed KCs release a two‑part cocktail: • IL‑12 expands the helper pool • IL‑27 wakes up dysfunctional CD8⁺ T cells, restoring effector molecules and metabolic vigor. (5/11) 6/ Dendritic cells? Dispensable. Secondary lymphoid organs? Surgically removed or pharmacologically blocked—help still flows. Immunity can be fabricated in situright inside the parenchyma. (6/11) 7/ Remove KCs and the circuit collapses; block CD40L or IL‑27 and CD8⁺ T cells relapse into lethargy. The essential loop is: CD4 T cell ➜ KC ➜ IL‑27 ➜CD8 T cell. (7/11) 8/ IL‑27 isn’t just necessary—it’s sufficient. Recombinant IL‑27 revived antiviral CD8⁺ activity in mice and super‑charged HBV‑specific T cells from patients. (8/11) 9/ Why care beyond HBV? Tapping a CD4–IL‑27 axis could be a universal key to re‑arming liver‑resident CD8⁺ T cells against infections and cancer (9/11) 10/ The work reframes “CD4 help”: not a lymph‑node pep talk but an on‑site renovation that overrides local tolerance. Therapeutics that mimic KC licensing could deliver potency where it’s needed and spare the rest of the body. (10/11) 11/ Kudos to Valentina Venzin, Cristian Beccaria, all members of the @IannaconeLab & collaborators for charting this intrahepatic circuit. Expect Kupffer‑cell licensing and IL‑27 to enter conversations on cancer immunotherapy, vaccines and beyond. Thoughts welcome! 🙌 @ImmunoPodcast @profvrr @ERC_Research @EMBO @EMBO_YIP @ArmeniseHarvard @AIRC_it @MyUniSR @SanRaffaeleMI (11/11)

@GilbertZMurimwa @herbert_zeh @AdamYopp @PatricioPolanc0 @UTSW_Surgery Congrats Gilbert!That’s huge!! 🥳🥳

6 years later, hard work pays off. Surreal matching at my dream fellowship. Thankful for @herbert_zeh @AdamYopp @PatricioPolanc0 and all my mentors @UTSW_Surgery and elsewhere. Wouldn't have made it here without them

@sam_golomb @SZhang_Lab @NDBios @UTSWCancerBio Congrats Samantha! 👏Have it on my reading list!

Worked on this for a long time and happy to publish what is hopefully just the beginning stages of an interesting sub-field of brain metastasis research! Thank you to @SZhang_Lab, co-authors and labmates🤓🍀🤠 @NDBios @UTSWCancerBio tinyurl.com/yh6wb9wt

@Carman_MC_Li @BruggeMe @NatureGenetics Congrats! 🎉

Our latest paper with Joan @BruggeMe is now out @NatureGenetics! We explore hidden mechanisms of BRCA1 hereditary breast cancer using new mouse models, revealing unexpected tumor-like chromatin changes in Brca1-heterozygous normal mammary cells. nature.com/articles/s4158…

@micpapanicolaou @CellCellPress Congrats 🎉

1/We are delighted to announce that our work “Lung-resident alveolar macrophages regulate the timing of breast cancer metastasis” has been published @CellCellPress. cell.com/cell/fulltext/… We show how alveolar macrophages are a barrier to breast cancer lung metastasis. 🧵

#UTSW biochemist Zhijian "James" Chen, Ph.D., wins the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, sometimes called “America’s Nobel,” for his discovery of the cGAS enzyme, which senses invading pathogens and triggers immune response. bit.ly/3MQjHIr @LaskerFDN

@Sorrell_Lab Congrats Mara! So well deserved! 🤩

Thank you so much to UTSW PDA for this honor. This award truly belongs to my lab – I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by such talented and incredible people.

@brekkenlab @MustangNatalie @jbiolchem @ASBMB Congrats Natalie & Rolf!

Paper out in final form sciencedirect.com/science/articl… @MustangNatalie did a great job driving it. @jbiolchem is a great home for it. $2300 with the @ASBMB member discount - great value. Submission/review/Publication process was fair and quick. BTW that is a lung met lit up by the BB

@UTSW_Pathology @QingZhangLab @MalladiLab Congratulations 🎉🎉

📢 Big announcements @UTSW_Pathology! Qing Zhang (@QingZhangLab) has been promoted to Professor. Dr. Zhang has also been appointed Director of Investigative Pathology! 🎉 Srinivas Malladi (@MalladiLab) has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure! 🍾 Congrats to both!

Debolina Ganguly, PhD (@debog93), a 2024 Parker Scholar at @DanaFarber, studies how metastatic stem cells promote systemic tolerance to tumor antigens & suppress responses to immunotherapy, advancing understanding of patient response. Hear more about PICI’s support of her work.

@MustangNatalie Congrats Natalie!!

My first first author paper has officially been published in JBC 🫣😆🥳 What a week jbc.org/article/S0021-…

@SayanBakshi @JudithAgudo1 @DanaFarber Thanks sayan!

@debog93 @JudithAgudo1 @DanaFarber Congratulations!! 🎉 Fantastic achievement.🏆 Way to go! 💐

Thrilled and honored to be a named a Parker Scholar! Very excited to be a part of the PICI network. Grateful for the support of my incredible mentor @JudithAgudo1 and the PICI leadership @DanaFarber

@shruthy_suresh @JudithAgudo1 @DanaFarber Thanks Shruthy

@debog93 @JudithAgudo1 @DanaFarber Congrats deb!!!