Michael B. Dwinell, PhD

Dr. Dwinell, Hanis-Stepka-Rettig Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, is the Founding Director of the Center for Immunology following its inception in 2018. He has completed an MCW executive leadership training program at the Sheldon Lubar School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as the Leadership for Social Inclusion & Equity Workshop developed by the National Coalition Building Institute. He has served on numerous NIH review panels and is currently chair of the Tumor Microenvironment study section.

Dr. Dwinell’s laboratory uses innovative strategies to reprogram the immune microenvironment to overcome immune suppression and evasion in pancreatic cancer. Specifically, his grant supported research examines chemokines as pivotal immune messengers regulating the tumor immune microenvironment. Dr. Dwinell oversees the immunology curriculum in Infectious Agents and Host Immunity and is past Director for Gastrointestinal & Nutritional Pathophysiology in the MCW medical school. He is course director of Mucosal Immunity and teaches in the Foundations in Biomedical Sciences and several other graduate school courses. He has frequently been named an Outstanding Medical Student and Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher and was recognized with the MCW Outstanding Mentor award in 2018.

My research interests currently focus on mechanisms tumor progression including remodeling the immune microenvironment. I use a variety of cellular, biochemical, and preclinical approaches to study the mechanisms immune-cancer cell communication essential for cancer progression.