Biography
Marilia Cascalho, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Surgery and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology. She received her medical training at the University of Lisbon, Portugal and did her graduate studies at the University of California, San Francisco, CA. Most recent research and professional experience includes Assistant Professor in the Departments of Immunology, Surgery and Pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, Chair of the Division of Experimental Surgery at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN and Associate Editor for the Journal of Immunology. She has published more than 50 papers and contributed to several books. Awards and honors include the Juvenile Diabetes Fellowship and Leukemia Research Foundation Fellowship.
Marilia Cascalho's laboratory studies the means by which a B cell memory response is generated from naive B cells and the requirements for the maintenance of memory responses. It studies the contributions of immunoglobulin, somatic hypermutation, thymus and T cells for the generation of long lived B cells. Another goal of the laboratory is the study of mechanisms by which B cells and/or immunoglobulin contribute to the development and regulation of T cell responses to microbes and in transplantation. To elucidate the elements of B cell memory and the mechanisms of B cell dependent T cell development, the laboratory generated novel experimental gene-targeted and conditional mouse models. Furthermore, a goal of the laboratory is the study of molecular mechanisms of somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin genes and whether these mechanisms contribute to pathogen diversity and/or tumorigenesis.