Monika Bambouskova, PhD
Principal Investigator, Bambouskova Lab; Assistant Professor of Medicine
- Phone: 314-273-3343
- Email: monika.bambouskova@nospam.wustl.edu
Biography
Dr. Bambouskova received her MS in Biochemistry at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. At the same place she earned PhD in Biochemistry in 2016. During her graduate studies she worked at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences where she focused on studies of plasma membrane-associated immunoreceptor signaling. She also completed short research internship at Center of Computational and Integrative Biology at MGH, Boston, where she focused on the utilization of high-throughput screening techniques in immune cells. During her postdoctoral work at Washington University in St. Louis she studied metabolic regulation of immune cell activation. Dr. Bambouskova joined the faculty in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Lipid Research in the Department of Medicine in July 2020.
Research Interests
Specific metabolic requirements of immune cells provide novel promising targets of therapeutic intervention to modulate inflammatory diseases. Dr. Bambouskova studies how metabolic regulation integrates with immune cell signaling. During her postdoctoral work she focused on metabolic rewiring in activating macrophages, particularly on the role of metabolite itaconate in regulation of macrophage inflammatory response. Her work defined a fundamentally novel connection between the cellular stress response and IκBζ-mediated inflammatory axis and its therapeutic impact for a number of autoimmune diseases. Her ongoing research program employs molecular biology and biochemistry techniques together with systems approaches to tackle molecular mechanisms of crosstalk between metabolism and cell signaling in the regulation of immune responses.