Ryan Hagenson

Program: Computational and Systems Biology

Current advisor: Gautam Dantas, PhD

Undergraduate university: Nebraska Wesleyan University, 2015

Enrollment year: 2024

Research summary
I design yeast-based immunotherapies for primarily for colorectal cancer. I have a particular interest in sensitizing immunologically cold colorectal tumors to additional therapy through the use of probiotics.

I engineer probiotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. boulardii to secrete immunomodulatory peptides for the treatment of colorectal cancer. Currently, I am focused on using our novel probiotic platform to sensitize immunologically cold colorectal cancer — which make up around 85% of all colorectal cancers — to additional therapy. As a non-invasive option, probiotic delivery of colorectal cancer therapies could one day be a preferable method to mitigate a multitude of risks and complications from colorectal cancer.

Graduate publications