- Professor, Department of Cell Biology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine/ NYU Langone Health
- Professor, Department of Pathology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine/ NYU Langone Health
Dr. Susan R. Schwab is a Professor in the Departments of Cell Biology and Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where her laboratory investigates the trafficking of normal and leukemic T cells. She earned her PhD. from the University of California, Berkeley.
A central focus of Dr. Schwab’s research is how T cells egress from tissues into circulation. Her group has established that a gradient of the signaling lipid sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is required to guide T cells out of lymphoid organs, identified the key cells and enzymes that control this gradient, and developed novel tools to map it with precision. This work has illuminated new targets for immunosuppressive drugs that modulate S1P signaling — trapping T cells in lymphoid organs and preventing them from reaching sites of inflammation, with potential relevance to autoimmune disease therapy.
Current work in the lab addresses the mechanisms by which T cells exit non-lymphoid organs, a process that may regulate the duration of inflammatory responses and govern the transition from T cell activation to exhaustion. Dr. Schwab’s lab also investigates how the trafficking requirements of leukemic T cells differ from those of normal T cells, with the aim of identifying therapeutic vulnerabilities in T cell malignancies.
