Craik Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2024

New radiotracer development to study immune cell mobilization of granzyme proteolytic activity

Project Abstract: The human granzymes are a somewhat mystical class of five serine proteases (A, B, H, K, M) that are expressed and conditionally secreted by select lymphocytes like natural killer (NK) and cytotoxic T cells (CTL). Based largely on data for A and B, granzymes have been historically regarded as pro-apoptotic effectors whereby they are presented transiently by NK and CTLs at the immunological synapse with a problematic target cell (e.g. cancer cell, pathogen infected cell), and immediately shuttled into the cytosol via perforin to initiate cell death. However, emerging data has begun to challenge this canon and present a more complex model in which secreted granzymes perform…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.