Shruti Naik, PhD

Dr. Naik is studying the interactions between immune cells and adult skin tissue stem cells in an effort to understand the how this crosstalk drives epithelial disorders, including chronic inflammation and cancer. Because adult tissue stem cells are long-lived cells that continually replenish tissues throughout an organism's lifetime, they represent ideal points of therapeutic intervention. Identification of inflammation-induced molecular changes in skin stem cells that drive epithelial dysfunction will facilitate the development of therapies for various epithelial inflammatory diseases and cancer.