Under the mentorship of Dr. Jonathan Irish and Dr. Rebecca Ihrie, I investigate the impact of radiographic contact of glioblastoma tumors with the lateral ventricle stem cell niche on the tumor immune microenvironment and identify novel mechanisms of targetable immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment.-Develop and utilize single-cell 40+ parameter mass cytometry and phospho-specific mass cytometry to profile the tumor immune infiltrate in patient-derived glioblastoma tissue. -Develop and implement R/RStudio-based and Cytobank-based machine learning analysis pipelines to uncover novel insights into the immune microenvironment in glioblastoma.- Developed multiplex immunohistochemistry pipelines to investigate immune positional identity in matched formalin-fixed parafin embedded tissue.Publications: Roussel M, Lhomme F, Roe CE, Bartkowiak T, Gravelle P, Laurent C, Fest T, Irish JM. Mass cytometry defines distinct immune profile in germinal center B-cell lymphomas. Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2020 Jan 9; doi: 10.1007/s00262-019-02464-z Marron T, Ryan AE, Reddy SM, Kaczanowska S, Younis RH, Thakkar D, Zhang J, Bartkowiak T, Howard R, Anderson, Olson D, Naqash AR, Patel RB, Sachdev E, Esperanza Rodríguez-Ruiz M, Sheffer M, Church SE, Fuhrman C, Overacre-Delgoffe A, Nguyen R, Florou V, Thaxton J, Aggen DH, and Guerriero JL. Considerations for treatment duration in responders to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Journal of Immunotherapy for Cancer 2021 Mar;9(3):e001901. doi: 10.1136/jitc-2020-001901.Bartkowiak T, Lima SM, Hayes MJ, Mistry AM, Sinnaeve J, Leelatian N, Roe CE, Mobley BC, Weaver KD, Thompson RC, Chambless LB, Ihrie RA, Irish JI. Immune cell regulation in stem cell niche contacting glioblastomas. bioRxiv 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.16.480731

-Worked on 4-1BB targeted immunotherapy for the treatment of HPV+ malignancies-Characterized the ability of 4-1BB agonists to induce a novel T cell phenotype (ThEO cells)-Described the potential for the ThEO phenotype to form immunological memory-Characterized the signaling pathways leading to ThEO development-Analyzed the clinical impact of ThEO phenotype cells in patients treated with 4-1BB therapy.Publications:Bartkowiak T, Singh S, Yang G, Galvan G, Haria D, Ai M, Allison JP, Sastry KJ, Curran MA. Unique potential of 4-1BB agonist antibody to promote durable regression of HPV+ tumors when combined with an E6/E7 peptide vaccine. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA. 2015 Sept 22; 112(38):E5290-9 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1514418112.Bartkowiak T and Curran MA. (2015). 4-1BB agonists: multi-potent potentiators of tumor immunity. Front. Oncol. 5:117. doi 10.3389/fonc.2015.00117

-Worked on imaging-based techniques -Developed novel methods for the analysis of intravital microscopy data-Investigated the role of the immune checkpoint ligand PD-L1 in tumor immune surveillance and T cell motility in response to sarcoma metastasis into the lung.Publications:Schietinger A, Arina A, Liu RB, Wells S, Huang J, Engels B, Bindokas V, Bartkowiak T, Lee D, Herrmann A, et al. Longitudinal confocal microscopy imaging of solid tumor destruction following adoptive T cell transfer. OncoImmunology 2013; 2:e26677

-Developed techniques in PCR, Western Blotting, flow cytometry, and microscopy-Worked on understanding the immune pathology that drives Anti-glomerular Basement Membrane Glomerulonephritis (Goodpasture's Syndrome) Publications:Zhou C, Lou K, Tatum K, Funk J, Wu J, Bartkowiak T, Kagan D, Lou Y. Differentiating glomerularinflammation from fibrosis in a bone marrow chimera for rat anti-glomerular basement membraneglomerulonephritis. Am J Neph 2015; 42(1):42-53Zhou C, Robertson J, Wu J, Bartkowiak T, Parker K, McMahon J, Lou Y.H. Natural recovery from antiglomerular basement membrane glomerulonephritis is associated with glomeruli-infiltratingCD8α+CD11c+MCHII+ cells. Am J Neph 2011; 34:519-528Zhou C, Wu J, Torres L, Hicks J.M., Bartkowiak T, Parker K, Lou Y.H. Blockade of osteopontin inhibitsglomerular fibrosis in a model of anti-glomerular basement membrane glomerulonephritis. Am J Neph 2010; 32:324-331Merszei J, Wu J, Torres L, Hicks J.M., Bartkowiak T, Tan F, Lou Y.H. Osteopontin overproduction isassociated with progression of glomerular fibrosis in a rat model of anti-glomerular basement membrane glomerulonephritis. Am J Neph 2010; 32:262-271