Biography

Dr. Todd Brusko is appointed as a Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He currently serves as the Research Director of the UF Diabetes Institute. The research interests of the Brusko Laboratory are centrally themed around understanding the mechanisms by which the immune system maintains a state of control, often referred to as immunological tolerance. This includes studies of the innate and adaptive immune system, with a particular focus on the TCR repertoire and costimulation of T cells and regulatory T cells. A portion of the Brusko lab is dedicated to understanding the genetic variants controlling these processes, as well as identifying the mechanisms at play in individuals who develop immune-mediated diseases. As evidence of this, Dr. Brusko has previously published over 120 studies reporting cellular immune defects in patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D), lupus, sepsis, and cancer and investigated cellular immune mechanisms and biological basis of such diseases. A major goal of the laboratory is to create a basic understanding of immune system development over the human lifespan in peripheral blood and within central and peripheral immune tissues. Toward this goal, the Brusko Laboratory is involved in major projects to profile immune system function in type 1 diabetes through the Network for Pancreatic Organ donors with Diabetes program (JDRF - nPOD), the thymus and lymphatics in the Human Biomolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP –NIH Directors Fund), NIH Human Islet Research Network programs (CHIB and HPAP), and the Human Atlas for Neonatal and Developmental Early Life – Immunity (HANDEL-I) program (Helmsley Charitable Trust). These efforts are enabled through the establishment of robust precision medicine genotyping, single cell epigenetics and transcriptomics, immune repertoire analysis, and high parameter spectral flow cytometry within the UF Center for Immunology and Transplantation (CIT). Collectively, these efforts provide a foundational framework for defining immunity in health and deviations in PBMCs and peripheral tissue immune cells indicative of disease states for the development of biomarkers and targeted immune interventions.