Dr Yin Wu

My lab aims to understand the biology of gamma-delta T cells in human tissues and cancers. These cells are seeded perinatally and developmentally into steady-state tissues without obvious inflammatory triggers. Whilst they can readily mount local and rapid responses to cancer, their presence at steady state suggests a nuanced role which balances self-tolerance versus tumour-rejection. In juxtaposition, effective and manageable cancer immunotherapy is fundamentally a balance of tolerance versus rejection. Thus, tissue-resident gamma-delta T cells would seem critical to cancer immunosurveillance as they straddle this dichotomy, yet they remain understudied in human health and disease.