Finally all moved in to the Assembly Building!

With a lot of hard work and planning from lab manager Rachel and RAP Dayana, we have successfully moved the lab over to the new Assembly building! The whole lab worked tirelessly to organize, pack. clean, and get everything ready for the movers to bring it just down the street.

We had an astonishing amount of boxes waiting for us but many hands make light work and we were able to get our new space set up in just a few days!

We are back up and running (as you can see by our busy tissue culture room!) While we are still traveling back and forth to Hillman for our mice, we are already settling into this amazing new space.

And of course everyone’s favorite part of the new building is our new Nespresso machine.

Cheers to a successful move!!

Congratulations Dr. Vignali!

MSTP student Paolo Vignali recently defended his thesis! The lab was happy to celebrate this amazing accomplishment with him. He will be heading back to med school to finish his MD next. Congrats Paolo!!!!

Welcome to the lab!!

The Delgoffe lab is growing! Recently we have added four new members to the lab, two new postdocs and two new graduate students.

Postdocs: Drew Wilfahrt joined us from the Mayo Clinic and will be studying the role of environmental metabolites and epigenetic modifications in T cells. Bingxian joined us from the Center for Metabolism and Mitochondrial Medicine at Pitt and will be studying metabolite usage in immune cells.

Graduate Students: Both of our new students are joining us from the Program in Microbiology and Immunology here at Pitt. Kellie Spahr previously worked at Seagen, Inc. in Seattle and she will be studying the role of exhausted T cells in the TME. Chenxiang Ye recently finished her MS at University of Michigan and will be studying the metabolic regulation of regulatory T cells.

Please join us in welcoming them to the lab!

Dr. Greg Delgoffe named head of the Tumor Microenvironment Center

Congratulations to Greg who was recently named the new head of the Tumor Microenvironment Center (TMC) at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. The TMC brings preclinical and clinical scientists together with a common goal of translating basic research to the clinic. Congrats and good luck to Greg in this new role!

Read more about the TMC here

We got to tour the new building!

Exciting changes are coming Spring 2022! The lab will be moving into a brand new building, just next door to our current home in the Hillman Cancer Center. The new building is half new construction and half a renovation of the historical Ford Assembly Plant. Lab members recently got to take a tour of the new facilities.

After donning our safety gear we got a tour through the common spaces as well as the lab spaces. Not only is the building beautiful but we are REALLY excited about the increased size of the flow cytometry core! We can’t wait to move in!

Read more about the new building here

We've been busy!!

November was full of travels for the lab! Many trainees received talks at national and international conferences. Here is a little overview of where we’ve been lately.

SITC Annual Meeting, Washington DC

Along with keeping up with the field of immunotherapy, at SITC our graduate students, lab tech Jess, and Tsinghua Scholar Jeremy, all presented posters. Jeremy was also selected to present his work on metabolite composition of tumor interstitial fluid and its effects on T cells.

Autumn Immunology Conference, Chicago

Our graduate students all gave short talks and Greg gave a talk at AIC in Chicago.

EMBO Workshop: Cancer Immunometabolism, Spain

Grad students Ronal and Andrew traveled to Spain to present their work. Andrew presented his poster on the effects of metabolic alterations to CAR-T cell media and won a poster award. Ronal gave a talk on his work studying alternate metabolite usage by exhausted T cells in the tumor. Greg also gave a talk here.

Looking ahead: Keystone: Cancer Neoantigens and Checkpoint Immunology, Feb 2022

Graduate students Paolo, Kristin, and Andrew will each give a short talk on their work at Keystone in February of next year. We look forward to seeing you there!!

Congratulations Dr. Watson!!

Congratulations to previous grad student Mac Watson! He successfully defended his thesis in October and we are so happy to officially call him Doctor! Mac has since graduated and left the lab in order to start his post-doc career in Dr. Russell Jones’ lab at the Van Andel Institute. We will miss Mac’s sense of humor and curiosity but we know he will have great successes as he continues his training. Congrats and good luck to Mac!

Good Luck Ashley!

As we start out 2021, we are saying goodbye to our dedicated lab manager Ashley Menk as she takes the next step in her career. Ashley has been in the Delgoffe lab for 6 years and her contributions to the lab cannot be overstated. She is leaving with 18 papers(!!), 4 of which are co-first author, and another 2 first author papers in revision. Outside of her scientific contributions, Ashley has been a wonderful mentor and friend to everyone in lab. We will miss her in the lab, but lucky for us she will still be in Pittsburgh so we can say hi at happy hour! Ashley will be taking an Associate Scientist position at Novasenta. We wish you the best of luck Ashley!!

Good luck Nicole!

As we bring in the new year, we are sad to say see you later (not good-bye!) to our first graduate student, Nicole! She is starting her post-doc in Dr. Ananda Goldrath’s lab at UCSD. Nicole has been an integral part of the lab since the beginning and we are so excited to see what she accomplishes in the next phase of her career. Good luck Nicole you will be missed!

Happy holidays from the Delgoffe Lab!

A bullseye from Nicole on our lab outing to LumberJaxes!

Congratulations Associate Professor Greg Delgoffe!

Congratulations to our PI Greg Delgoffe on his recent promotion to associate professor! We had a great time celebrating his promotion last Friday! You’re the best Greg!