John Devany, PhD
Dr. Devany completed his PhD working in the laboratory of Margaret Gardel at the University of Chicago. There he led several projects which revealed new mechanisms of how cells in epithelia interact mechanically to reorganize after wound healing and to determine how cells grow and divide in the confined environment of an epithelium. Dr. Devany recently moved into T cell immunotherapy to learn how to apply our understanding of biology to the treatment of disease. Specifically, he started his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Jaehyuk Choi at Northwestern in 2023 where he uses a combination of screening and bioengineering approaches to develop next generation CAR T cell therapies. He also plans to apply his background in cell biology, biosensing and physics to reveal new molecular and cellular mechanisms of CAR T cell function.
Selected Publications
1. Devany J, Falk MJ, Holt LJ, Murugan A, Gardel ML. Epithelial tissue confinement inhibits cell growth
and leads to volume-reducing divisions. Dev Cell. 2023 Jun 14; PubMed PMID: 37339629.
2. Harmon RM, Devany J, Gardel ML. Dia1 coordinates differentiation and cell sorting in a stratifiedepithelium. J Cell Biol. 2022 May 2;221(5) PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8958268.
3. Devany J, Sussman DM, Yamamoto T, Manning ML, Gardel ML. Cell cycle-dependent active stressdrives epithelia remodeling. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Mar 9;118(10) PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7958291.