Curriculum Vitae

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I am dedicated to increasing our understanding of how human behaviour affects the immune system. This covers behaviours relating to diet, exercise, sleep, social interaction, and stress (among others). My current focus is on the interplay between circadian health and immunity, particularly with respect to timing of food intake and T cell immunity against cancers.

  • Immunology & Cell Biology: Primary mouse & human T cell culture, in vitro T cell functional assays, CAR T cell production, flow cytometry, lentiviral transduction
  • Molecular Biology: CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing/knock in/deletion, molecular cloning, qPCR, ddPCR, immunoblotting, co-immunoprecipitation, protein expression & purification, RNA extraction & single-cell RNA library preparation
  • Microbiology: Bacterial (E. coli, D. solani), fungal (S. cerevisiae), nematode (C. elegans), and parasite (T. brucei, P. knowlesi) culture, bacteriophage culture from field samples, phage transduction, random transposon mutagenesis screening
  • Microscopy & Imaging: Live microscopy, immunofluorescence, super-resolution microscopy, traction force microscopy, electron microscopy. Experience with spinning disc confocal, airyscan confocal, lattice SIM2, oblique plane light sheet, lattice light sheet, and epifluorescence microscopes, and LumiCycle, IncuCyte & CellCyte imaging systems. Experience fixing and staining samples with heavy metals for EM imaging.
  • Bioinformatics & Data Analysis: Bulk transcriptomic and proteomic analysis (R, Python, Excel), custom image analysis (ImageJ, MATLAB), conventional image analysis (ImageJ, Imaris, Zen), flow cytometric analysis (FlowJo), statistical analyses (Prism, Excel)
  • Animal Models: Mouse breeding, colony management, and tissue harvesting

DegreeInstitutionYearLocation
PhD in Cell Biology & ImmunologyUniversity of Cambridge2025CIMR
MA in Natural SciencesUniversity of Cambridge2021Churchill College
MRes in Medical ScienceUniversity of Cambridge2020Dept. of Medicine
MSci in BiochemistryUniversity of Cambridge2019Dept. of Biochemistry
BA in Natural SciencesUniversity of Cambridge2018Churchill College

2025 CSAR PhD Student Award winner

University-wide competition "to recognise outstanding research with real world application and to assist students to pursue their research or careers", awarded by the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research

Journal Articles

CitationDOI
Y. Asano et al., “Nuclear polarization to the immune synapse facilitates an early transcriptional burst,” Science Immunology, 2025.DOI