Dr. Jeremy Goettel joined the Vanderbilt faculty in the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroneterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition. He received his PhD in cell and developmental biology from Vanderbilt University in 2010 where he studied cytokine signaling in intestinal epithelial cells in the lab of Dr. Brent Polk. He performed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Scott Snapper at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital where he investigated mechanisms of mucosal immune regulation with a particular focus on monogenic disorders driving inflammatory bowel diseases. During this time, Dr. Goettel developed and utilized humanized murine systems as translational research tools that enabled studies related to human immune-mediated diseases, human immunobiology, and assessing human therapeutics. His contributions to the field of humanized mice, mucosal immunology, and inflammatory bowel disease earned him a Young Investigator Award from the International Workshop on Humanized Mice and, more recently, the prestigious CCFA Shanti Sitaraman Young IBD Investigator Award. Dr. Goettel’s research at Vanderbilt will focus on defining the roles specific regulatory T cells and innate lymphoid cells play in mucosal immune homeostasis and inflammation-associated carcinogenesis using both genetic and humanized murine systems.
Dr. Goettel's lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms regulating intestinal immunity and what leads to dysregulation and disease as well as how gut microbes shape the mucosal immune system. In particular the cytokine interleukin-23 (IL23) is required for the development of many experimental models of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in mice and mutations in IL23 receptor (IL23R) have been identified as susceptibility or resistance factors for Crohn’s disease. We have developed several murine strains that will facilitate investigations into the role of IL23R signaling in a cell-specific manner using experimental models of IBD and inflammation-associated carcinogenesis. In addition, we have developed several humanized murine systems to model intestinal inflammation driven by human immune cells and new models enabling engraftment of human tumors with autologous immune cells to assess combination therapies and immune activation. We hope that these strategies will be informative for clinical management and pave the way towards precision medicine.