Our Science – Lucas Website

Philip J Lucas, Ph.D.

Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch Transplantation Therapy Section Staff Scientist 10 Center Drive CRC Room 3-3288 Bethesda, MD 20892-1203 Phone:   301-435-3542 Fax:   301-480-4354 E-Mail:   lucasp@mail.nih.gov

Biography

BS,The Pennsylvania State University 1982
Microbiology and Molecular Biology
PhD, The George Washington University 1991
Microbiology and Immunology
Fellow, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 1991
Mentor Dr. Dennis Loh
Fellow, NIH, Experimental Immunology Branch 1995
Mentor Dr. Ronald Gress
Staff Scientist, NIH, Experimental Transpl & Immunology Branch 2000

Research

My major research interest is understanding the role of TGF-Beta in leukemogenesis. It was discovered that the presence of a dominant negative TGF-Beta type II receptor over-expressed in T cells causes an unusual expansion of the CD8+ T cell subset. This expansion leads to the formation of leukemias that have been shown to be caused by transformation events that do not share a common origin, and thus involves multiple potential oncogenes. This model has been useful for both characterizing T cell leukemias, as well as understaning the mechanisms that inititiate T cell expansion that lead to abberant T cell homeostaisis.

This page was last updated on 7/15/2008.