Oluwatayo (Tayo) Ikotun, Ph.D.

Ikotun seeks to deliver off-the-shelf nuclear imaging tools that facilitate non-destructive, longitudinal and quantitative monitoring of the immune system. The effectiveness of existing and new drug products relies on the body's immune response, both at the specific tissue level and throughout the entire immune system. Thus, tools Ikotun is developing may be utilized for disease management, treatment planning, therapy monitoring and informing underlying mechanisms of action and may serve as predictive biomarkers of patient response. 

Her long-term goal is to move toward multiplex in vivo imaging to facilitate global assessment of the cross-talk between distinct immune cell populations and enable comprehensive phenotypic stratification of immune subtypes. She uses positron emission tomography, or PET, and single photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT, imaging to examine how the concentration, distribution and function of immune cells change as a tumor develops and spreads in the body. Leveraging multiplex SPECT techniques that allow her to observe two to three different immune cell types simultaneously, Ikotun aims to capture a fuller picture of the various interactions taking place within the tumor microenvironment to offer a more nuanced look at a patient’s cellular response to disease and therapeutic intervention.

Ikotun is also developing new animal models of progressive fibrosis to support the creation of new therapies. Fibrosis can occur in nearly every part of the body and result in organ failure or death if untreated. In the past 30 years, approximately 90% of therapies that have shown promise in animal models of fibrosis have failed in human clinical trials. To create fibrosis models that more accurately reflect human disease, Ikotun implants stem cell induced fibroblast activation organoids into mice. These models can reveal how fibrosis progresses and be used to test possible treatments.