I would like to be able to help companion animals, with the added benefit that if a treatment works in animal models, it can translate more easily to people.
Welcome Dr. Jillian Richmond
Dr. Richmond’s laboratory at Cummings School will focus on immunology and cancer research
A new laboratory opened this summer at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University to host the ground-breaking work of prolific researcher and mentor, Dr. Jillian Richmond (she/her). An adjunct professor for the past three years at Cummings School, she joined the faculty full-time in July as an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology. Her new lab will incorporate spontaneous disease in pets to advance her research into lymphoma and skin disorders.
“I would like to be able to help companion animals, with the added benefit that if a treatment works in animal models, it can translate more easily to people,” she says of her work.
With 75 student alumni from her laboratory at the University of Massachusetts, Richmond credits her own mentors with shaping her career path, starting with her high school AP Biology teacher, who inspired her to continue her studies in the sciences. Her love of research took root at Johns Hopkins University, where she researched the role of bacterial conjugation (gene transfer between bacterial cells) in spreading antibiotic resistance under a mentor who similarly encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D. An immunology course hooked Richmond on T cells (or lymphocytes, white blood cells that assist the immune system), which would define her work over the next two decades. As an undergraduate, she interned for two summers at Abbott Bioresearch Center, researching drug-induced liver injuries and the efficacy of antibody medications, again mentored by two influential researchers.
After earning her BS in molecular and cellular biology, Richmond began her Ph.D. in pathology and immunology at Boston University School of Medicine, focusing her work and studies on T cell migration through the body in relation to a number of diseases, including tuberculosis and cancer. She also conducted research into environmental triggers of childhood asthma in an immunology laboratory at BU’s Pulmonary Center.
Richmond first started teaching as a doctoral student. She was awarded a GK12 Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to mentor students in a high school science class, while in turn being mentored herself to hone her teaching skills. She soon put these skills to use, lecturing on pathology at BU’s Metropolitan College and as adjunct faculty at both Quinebaug Valley Community College and Clark University, teaching courses on anatomy, physiology, biology, genetics, and disease.
Richmond performed her first post-doctoral research fellowship at Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases. Her work explored the role of chemokines (signaling proteins involved in the immune system) and T cell migration in response to vaccines and viral infections in mouse models.
“I also wanted to understand chemokine-directed T cell responses in autoimmune diseases,” says Richmond. “So I performed a second fellowship at UMass.”
Richmond would spend the next 12 years at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, starting as a post-doctoral research associate and later an instructor in the Department of Dermatology, eventually joining the faculty as an assistant professor with her own laboratory.
One of Richmond’s most significant accomplishments at UMass was helping develop a treatment to reverse vitiligo, a chronic autoimmune condition that causes skin to lose pigmentation. The studies began in mice, and after successful translational clinical trials, JAK inhibitors were approved for human use. Her team also worked on an antibody treatment for vitiligo that blocks memory T cells that recognize pigment production, currently in clinical trials with human patients.
To support these studies, Richmond was awarded grants from the American Skin Association and the Dermatology Foundation. She also ran preclinical testing models for Abbott and Genzyme (Sanofi). She currently holds three patents related to the diagnosis of skin conditions in both animals and humans and the diagnosis and treatment of vitiligo.
As her research progressed, Richmond suspected a connection between chemokines involved in vitiligo to another chronic autoimmune disease, lupus, which causes inflammation and damage to tissues and organs and can lead to kidney failure.
The Lupus Research Alliance and U.S. Department of Defense funded Richmond’s laboratory at UMass to study chemokines and T cell migration and memory in lupus. She examined other autoimmune diseases and cancers through grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Skin of Color Society. The grants also provided the opportunity to bring students into the lab to mentor. Many were published alongside Richmond.
When Richmond came across research using pet dogs as models for human cancer, she was inspired to start down a new path, as dogs would be a closer model than mice to humans, and the research could also benefit animal patients.
For her initial research, Richmond looked at a form of cutaneous (skin) lupus that affects dogs using leftover tissue from skin biopsies after veterinary pathologists used what they needed to make a diagnosis. Her work helped inspire a veterinary clinical trial testing the same class of inhibitors used to treat vitiligo against canine lupus.
“It was very rewarding,” she says.
Through this work, Richmond connected with Dr. Cheryl London, associate dean for research, and Anne Engen and Dusty Professor in Comparative Oncology at Cummings School. She joined London’s immunology studies into canine osteosarcoma (bone cancer) as an adjunct professor in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at Cummings School. For the past three years, she has worked closely with London and Dr. Heather Gardner, assistant professor in the Departments of Clinical Sciences and Comparative Pathobiology at Cummings School, on clinical trials evaluating different combinations of chemotherapies and immunotherapies to treat canine osteosarcoma.
“We’re starting to see some progress in the clinical trials,” says Richmond. “Osteosarcoma tends to impact kids, and often requires amputation and chemotherapy. We want to find ways to treat it.”
Richmond also began studying a cancer of the skin called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL), in particular, an aggressive subtype often overlooked and with minimal treatment options. With the support of her student lab assistants, Richmond published a number of papers to better understand this form of CTCL. She conferred with London on a similar form of lymphoma seen in dogs.
“We can try to make a treatment for dogs that might help combat this aggressive lymphoma and work in all patients,” she says.
Together with London, Richmond was awarded a grant from Merck Animal Health to support this research. The team has already found a potential treatment that is currently working in 50 percent of the dogs in clinical trials.
“It’s really promising, and that will be the main focus of my lab at Tufts [Cummings School],” says Richmond. “We want to make some progress into CTCL that translates for people and pets with aggressive tumors.”
Mentoring will figure prominently in her work at Cummings School. Four students already joined her new lab for the summer: a medical student, an undergraduate, and two high school students. She’s ready to add D.V.M. and Ph.D. students to the mix and is currently accepting applications. Richmond will also begin lecturing in the fall in preclinical courses.
Of this new chapter at Cummings School, Richmond says, “I’m excited to be formally combining teaching and research in my day job, to start working with D.V.M. students, and to make progress in CTCL projects for dogs and people.”
Department:
Dept. of Comparative Pathobiology