Vesicle Vibe
Vesicle Vibe is the AAEV Virtual Seminar Series created to offer an educational platform for junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students involved in EV research. Its mission is to provide a space for discussion on ongoing cutting edge EV research, and to reflect on the EV research field and its contribution to biology and medicine across various educational and experience levels, ranging from undergraduates to senior faculty members.
Join us every month for AAEV Virtual Seminar!
​If you're interested in presenting or serving as a moderator, please email vesiclevibe@aaev.org.
Upcoming seminar:
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Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/2Z3v81F8Qb6psulKkyUnhw
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/s/84061177620?pwd=xBWpMH9GLKZneu5aSqQl435ygi8EQR.1
Time: Wednesday, July 16th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)
Speaker: Kate McAndrews, Ph. D. ​
Assistant Professor, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Talk: CD9+ extracellular vesicles from cancer cells specifically instigate generation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells to promote pancreas cancer that is recalcitrant to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy
Moderator: Kevin Li, Columbia University (New York, NY)
Dr. Kate McAndrews, Ph.D. completed her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nevada Reno in 2010. She completed her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Dr. Michelle Dawson in 2015, where she trained as a matrix bioengineer with a specific focus on understanding the influence of molecular and mechanical cues provided by the microenvironment on mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) function in tissue regeneration and cancer progression. Dr. McAndrews joined the laboratory of Dr. Raghu Kalluri at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for her postdoctoral training in 2015. Her work has focused on novel biology of extracellular vesicles (EVs)/exosomes, their role in cancer, and their utility as therapeutic vehicles as well as the functional role of fibroblasts in tissue repair and cancer. Dr. McAndrews’s postdoctoral work was supported by an Ergon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and received an NIH K22 award to support her work on extracellular vesicles in pancreatic cancer in 2024. Recently, she has developed an EV-based vaccine platform for infectious disease and cancer (Luo, McAndrews, et al. Journal of Controlled Release 2024) and identified a role for T cell-mediated clearance of cancer cells in the efficacy of KRAS inhibition (Mahadevan, McAndrews, et al. Cancer Cell 2023, McAndrews et al. Provisionally accepted at Science Translational Medicine, McAndrews et al. Under revision). She is using novel GEMMs to unravel the role of EVs/exosomes in pancreatic cancer progression and metastasis. Such models have enabled the evaluation of endogenous EV exchange and functional interrogation of EV transfer in spontaneously occurring cancer for the first time. A preferential accumulation of endogenously released cancer cell derived CD9 + EVs in fibroblasts and macrophages was observed, which leads to reprogramming of fibroblasts and metabolic rewiring of macrophages to impact tumor progression (McAndrews et al. In submission process). During her fellowship period, Dr. McAndrews has published 16 first author and 21 co-author peer-reviewed studies, with 5 first author and two co-author manuscripts currently under review and in the submission process. Currently, her total citations are 5369 and her h-index is 27.
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Previous seminar:​​​​​​​​​​
Time: Wednesday, June 18th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)
Moderator: Paul Spezza, B.S.– Kalluri Lab at MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, TX)
Speaker: Pua, Heather H, M.D., Ph. D. ​
Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Talk: T cell Extracellular Vesicles: Communicating Signals in Tissue Inflammation.​
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Dr. Heather Pua is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her research focuses on how extracellular vesicles and small noncoding RNAs regulate immune responses and tissue inflammation, with a special emphasis on T cell driven lung inflammation and asthma. Dr. Pua earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology and her M.D./Ph.D. in Immunology from Duke University, where she identified a role for autophagy in naive T cell survival. She then completed her residency in Anatomic Pathology, a clinical fellowship in Molecular Genetic Pathology, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. During her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Ansel, she studied the role of miRNAs in allergic inflammation in the lung.
In 2017, Dr. Pua joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University, where she established her own laboratory. Utilizing techniques including molecular biology, cellular immunology, and vesicle flow cytometry, her team aims to uncover novel mechanisms of EV-mediated immune regulation and identify new potential therapeutic targets for chronic inflammatory diseases. Dr. Pua is a member of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation (VI4) and the and Verbilt Center for Immunobiology (VCI) and is committed to the outreach of immunology in science.
​Time: Wednesday, May 14th, 11:00 am –12:00 pm CT (12 pm- 1:00 pm EST)
Moderator: Karolina Dorosz
Speaker: Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Talk: Future of Exosomes
Dr. Raghu Kalluri is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He currently holds the Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research.
His research program is focused on innovative research to unravel how cells and their environment communicate to maintain organ health, and how such communication networks are altered in cancer and other diseases. Current areas of research in the Kalluri laboratory include cancer biology and metastasis, tumor microenvironment, tissue injury and regeneration and the biology of exosomes in health and disease. We investigate the biology of cancer with an implicit mission to develop new strategies for diagnosis and therapy. Dr. Kalluri has been recognized for his excellence in research and teaching and the Kalluri laboratory is a fertile training ground for the next generation of scientists and physician-scientists.