My interest in Immunology and autoimmunity was sparked early, during my Honours year in SVI’s Immunology and Diabetes group. After completing my Honours year, I pursued a PhD in Professor Helen Thomas’ laboratory. I studied key pathways involved in the recognition and destruction of insulin-producing beta cells by T cells. Following my PhD, I took a postdoctoral fellowship in New York, with Professor Schietinger at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, to understand how T cells lose their function due to chronic interaction with tumour antigens.
Currently, as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Immunology and Diabetes at SVI, I am investigating how autoreactive T cells retain their function and persistence for a long duration in autoimmune diabetes. We are deploying cutting-edge technologies – CRISPR mediated gene editing, RNA sequencing, metabolomics and imaging – to answer key questions about the function and survival of autoreactive T cells in autoimmune diabetes.
We believe that by answering the fundamental questions about how autoreactive T cells operate in autoimmune diabetes, we will uncover novel pathways which can be targeted to develop future therapies.
Ultimately, understanding how the immune system functions in autoimmunity will not only lead to novel immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases, but it will also inform how to design better cancer immunotherapies and how to tackle autoimmunity as a side-effect of these treatments.
Key achievements
2017 Professor TJ Martin medal for Best PhD Thesis
2022 Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International Postdoctoral Fellowship; SVI Rising Star Award
Selected publications
Gearty SV, Dündar F, Zumbo P, Espinosa-Carrasco G, Shakiba M, Sanchez-Rivera FJ, Socci ND, Trivedi P, Lowe SW, Lauer P, Mohibullah N, Viale A, DiLorenzo TP, Betel D, Schietinger A. An autoimmune stem-like CD8 T cell population drives type 1 diabetes. Nature. 2022 Feb;602(7895):156-161. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-04248-x. Epub 2021 Nov 30. PMID: 34847567.
Trivedi PM, Fynch S, Kennedy LM, Chee J, Krishnamurthy B, O’Reilly LA, Strasser A, Kay TWH, Thomas HE. Soluble FAS ligand is not required for pancreatic islet inflammation or beta-cell destruction in non-obese diabetic mice. Cell Death Discov. 2019 Sep 23;5:136. doi: 10.1038/s41420-019-0217-z. PMID: 31552143; PMCID:PMC6755132.
Scott AC, Dündar F, Zumbo P, Chandran SS, Klebanoff CA, Shakiba M, Trivedi P, Menocal L, Appleby H, Camara S, Zamarin D, Walther T, Snyder A, Femia MR, Comen EA, Wen HY, Hellmann MD, Anandasabapathy N, Liu Y, Altorki NK, Lauer P, Levy O, Glickman MS, Kaye J, Betel D, Philip M, Schietinger A. TOX is a critical regulator of tumour-specific T cell differentiation. Nature. 2019 Jul;571(7764):270-274. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1324-y. Epub 2019 Jun 17. PMID: 31207604; PMCID: PMC7698992.
Trivedi PM, Graham KL, Scott NA, Jenkins MR, Majaw S, Sutherland RM, Fynch S, Lew AM, Burns CJ, Krishnamurthy B, Brodnicki TC, Mannering SI, Kay TW, Thomas HE. Repurposed JAK1/JAK2 Inhibitor Reverses Established Autoimmune Insulitis in NOD Mice. Diabetes. 2017 Jun;66(6):1650-1660. doi: 10.2337/db16-1250. Epub 2017 Mar 14. PMID: 28292965.
Trivedi P, Graham KL, Krishnamurthy B, Fynch S, Slattery RM, Kay TW, Thomas HE. Perforin facilitates beta cell killing and regulates autoreactive CD8+ T-cell responses to antigen in mouse models of type 1 diabetes. Immunol Cell Biol. 2016 Apr;94(4):334- 41. doi: 10.1038/icb.2015.89. Epub 2015 Oct 8. PMID: 26446877.