Mei Lab

Surrounding every tumor is a dynamic microenvironment that includes cancer cells, immune cells, fibroblasts, structural proteins, and signaling molecules. Led by principal investigator Shenglin Mei, Ph.D., the Mei Laboratory investigates the dynamic interactions between tumor cells and the tumor microenvironment during tumor progression and metastasis.

With a particular emphasis on context-dependent remodeling and regulation, the lab uses single-cell technologies, genomic datasets, machine learning, and other experimental methods to study changes to the tumor microenvironment during tumor progression and metastasis in prostate cancer, neuroblastoma, and other cancers with high rates of metastasis. The lab's computational biology techniques may be applied to predict metastasis at an early stage and refine therapeutic techniques for cancers typified by immunosuppressive microenvironments and low T-cell infiltration.

Current lab focuses extend in the following directions:
1) developing computational methods for integrating multi-modal data, such as scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq, spatial transcriptomics, ChIP-seq, and CRISPR screening,
2) investigating context-dependent remodeling of the tumor microenvironment, and
3) identifying novel regulators that drive the tumor microenvironment remodeling.