Alexandria Wells, Ph.D.

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology

Education & Training

  • Postdoctoral fellow, National Institutes of Health (mentor: Yasmine Belkaid)
  • Ph.D., Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (mentor: Leonid Pobezinsky)
  • B.A., New College of Florida

Research Interests

  • Tissue immunity
  • Immune cell development and function
  • Langerhans cells
  • Endogenous retroelements
  • Gene regulation

As the body’s largest and outermost barrier organ, the skin is a primary target for infection and autoinflammatory diseases. Thus, generating protective immune responses in the skin is essential for host resilience. My lab seeks to understand how host-intrinsic genetic factors regulate the development, maintenance and function of tissue-resident immune cells, including Langerhans cells and CD8 T cells. Specifically, we are interested in how endogenous retroelements, ancient transposon and retroviral sequences that occupy up to 37% to 40% of the mouse and human genomes, respectively, coordinate immunity in the skin. We also aim to elucidate the molecular mechanisms regulating endogenous retroelement expression in tissues. Together, we hope to identify both molecular and cellular targets that can be therapeutically leveraged to improve wound repair responses, and to treat and prevent diseases including psoriasis and cancer.

Publications

Alexandria C. Wells, Djalma Souza Lima-Junior, Verena M. Link, Margery Smelkinson, Siddarth R. Krishnamurthy, Liang Chi, Elisha Segrist, Claudia A. Rivera, Ana Teijeiro, Nicolas Bouladoux, Yasmine Belkaid. Adaptive immunity to retroelements promotes barrier integrity. bioRxiv, 2024. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.09.606346

Warakorn Kulalert, Alexandria C. Wells*, Verena M. Link*, Ai Ing Lim, Nicolas Bouladoux, Motoyoshi Nagai, Oliver J. Harrison, Olena Kamenyeva, Juraj Kabat, Michel Enamorado, Isaac M. Chiu, Yasmine Belkaid. The neuroimmune CGRP-RAMP1 axis tunes cutaneous adaptive immunity to the microbiota. PNAS. 121 (11) e2322574121. 7 March 2024.

Simone L. Park*, Susan N. Christo*, Alexandria C. Wells, Luke C. Gandolfo, Nicholas Collins, Stephane Guillaume, Seong-Ji Han, Maximilien Evrard, Clara Castellucci, George Kannourakis, Stuart P. Berzins, Lisa A. Mielke, Francis R. Carbone, Terence P. Speed, Axel Kallies, Yasmine Belkaid, Laura M. Mackay. Divergent Molecular networks program functionally distinct CD8+ skin-resident memory T cells. Science. 382, 1073-1079 (2023).

Alexandria C. Wells*, Kaito Hioki*, Constance C. Angelou*, Adam Lynch, Xueting Liang, Daniel J. Ryan, Iris Thesmar, Suale Zhanybekova, Saulius Zyklys, Jacob Ullom, Agnes Cheong, Jesse Mager, Georg A. Hollander, Elena L. Pobezinskaya, Leonid A. Pobezinsky. Let-7 enhances murine anti-tumor CD8 T cell responses by promoting memory and antagonizing terminal differentiation. Nature Communications. 14, 5585 (2023).

Alexandria C. Wells, Keith A. Daniels, Constance C. Angelou, Eric Fagerberg, Amy S. Burnside, Michele Markstein, Dominique Alfandari, Raymond M. Welsh, Elena L. Pobezinskaya, Leonid A. Pobezinsky. Modulation of let-7 miRNAs controls the differentiation of effector CD8 T cells. eLife July 24, 2017.