Katarzyna Placek

Katarzyna Placek discovered that the histone methyltransferase SET7 is essential for establishing trained immunity epigenetic marks, and that its pharmacological inhibition prevents maladaptive immune training while preserving acute inflammatory responses, providing a selective therapeutic approach for modulating trained immunity in cancer. Her work on histone lactylation as a metabolic-epigenetic coupling mechanism in trained monocytes revealed how glycolytic metabolites directly regulate chromatin accessibility at innate immune gene promoters. She investigates epigenetic enzyme targeting to selectively enhance anti-tumor trained immunity while suppressing cancer-promoting inflammatory programs.