Melanie Rutkowski, PhD, recently was voted to become a Resident Member of the Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research. Her team will take over the research space vacated by former CIC director Vic Engelhard, PhD, after his retirement. Rutkowski, an associate professor of Microbiology, Immunology, & Cancer Biology, studies the complex interactions between the immune system, commensal microbiome, and tumor microenvironment. Her elevation to Resident Member reflects her scientific expertise and contribution to the immunology community as a collaborator and mentor.
Rutkowski’s academic journey began at Montana State University, where she developed a murine model to understand systemic factors affecting disease progression of a bovine pathogen. Her graduate work awakened her to the idea that stress and environmental conditions have a profound impact on systemic immune function. This foundation ultimately guided her toward the field of cancer research, particularly due to personal experiences with family members affected by the disease. Motivated by the unpredictability of cancer progression in different patients, she seeks to develop models to study these variations and their underlying biological mechanisms. “There are patients who can receive nearly identical treatments, and we still don’t know why some will go on to develop metastatic disease and others don’t. My biggest obsession is to utilize our models and expertise to understand divergent patient outcomes in hopes making a clinically impactful discovery,” she explained.
Currently, Rutkowski and her team are studying the way the gut microbiome, immune system, and cancer cells interact. Perturbing the gut environment can lead to microbes interacting with immune cells they typically don’t, and the lab has identified these interactions as having severe consequences on the metabolic and functional potential of the immune cells. This in turn modifies their ability to combat cancer. Certain gut conditions may even facilitate cancer metastasis by creating environments in tissues, such as the lungs, that are more hospitable to cancer cells.
Rutkowski is an established mentor and leader within the UVA community. She supports junior faculty members and early-career researchers, offering guidance on grant writing, research development, and academic career advancement. She is also engaged in science advocacy and public communication. She has participated in media outreach, including interviews with local news and social media engagement, to promote awareness of cancer research and the significance of biomedical funding.
Becoming a Resident Member of the CIC will consolidate Rutkowski’s lab space, allowing her entire team to work in a shared environment and facilitating closer collaborations with other researchers. “When I first came to UVA, there wasn’t a very strong tumor immunology community. Now, the CIC is an incredibly vibrant space because we have all these junior investigators that have been hired. They’re injecting fresh, extraordinarily creative ideas into the mix. Everyone wants to be a member,” she said, “including myself”.