Monika Schmelz

Teaching Interests

My salary is a 100% supported by extramural funds. Therefore teaching is not a departmental requirement for me. However, I strongly believe in teaching and mentoring, and I always found contacts with students satisfactory and I welcomed students in my laboratory. I also trained and mentored colleagues, clinical as well as research staff. Students should derive long-term benefits from their time with me by continuing to grow and develop as scientists. My primary goal is to have a positive effect on the students' future professional practice. Part of the impact involves stimulating students to consider situations from perspectives different from those they normally adopt. This goal also involves encouraging students to develop career-long habits of self-motivated learning. In my opinion, to teach students how to think independently and “out of the box” is the most important aspect of teaching in general. A difficult teaching issue, but an important aspect of research, is the ambiguous, uncertain, and sometimes contradictory nature of research. Rather than supply students with static facts, I believe that I will serve them better by teaching them how to define a problem, how to decide what they need to solve it, how to find and evaluate new information, how to recognize their limits, and how to be prepared for change.

Research Interests

My primary research interest is to study how tumor cells escape immunosurveillance, which is a hallmark of cancer, in aggressive diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and other lymphomas. Major histocompatibility complex class II (MHCII) molecules are cell surface glycoproteins, which play a major role in tumor immunosurveillance. MHCII proteins are involved in antigen processing and presentation, and are important for the adaptive immune response. The expression of MHCII is essential for patient outcome. The loss of MHCII expression leads to a worse outcome for patients diagnosed with DLBCL. The lab is studying the underlying mechanisms of MHCII deregulation.I also have a strong interest in biorepository science. I am the PI of the ALTBR (Arizona Lymphoid Tissue and Blood Repository), which is an integral part of University of Arizona Cancer Center’s TACMASR core. The lab also hosts the Biorepository (ANCHOR-Arizona Biorepository) for a “Anal Cancer/HSIL Outcomes Research" (ANCHOR) study, which is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute’s Office of HIV and AIDS Malignancy (OHAM). It is a Phase III multi-site clinical trial. During the course of the 8-year clinical trial, the Biorepository will receive ~320,000 specimens for future NCI-approved correlative studies.