Meelad Amouzgar

Biological processes like cell cycle progression and division are tightly linked to cell fate decisions across development of the hematopoietic system. Activated T cells enter the cell cycle and rapidly proliferate into diverse cell states with varied functional capacity that are crucial to establish protective immunity against disease. Despite this tight link, there is a lack of experimental and computational tools that enable the study of T cell state, cell cycle dynamics, and division in tandem. I propose studying the interplay of these systems by developing integrated experimental and computational single-cell tools, and combining these tools with drugs targeting cell cycle regulators or T cell receptor signaling to advance our understanding of the patterns of T cell states during cell cycle. This work will give us valuable insight into how cell cycle or TCR signaling regulators could be harnessed to reprogram T cell fate for optimizing therapeutic cells for cancer or cell rejuvenation.