McArdle postdoctoral researcher Dr. Umar Sheikh (Lambert Lab) has been awarded a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the Wisconsin Partnership Program to study how the female sex hormone estrogen affects immune responses after infection with cancer-causing papillomaviruses.
Papillomaviruses are DNA tumor viruses that infect epithelial cells and are a leading cause of cancers that include cervical and head-and-neck cancers (these viruses cause 5% of all human cancers). While most HPV infections are cleared by the immune system, persistent infections with high-risk strains of HPV are common and can, over time, lead to oncogenesis. Dr. Sheikh’s project is titled, “Unraveling the Crosstalk Between Estrogen and Viral Immunoevasion in Murine Papillomavirus Infection Model” and aims to understand the role of estrogen receptor-alpha (ERalpha) in helping papillomavirus infections to avoid the immune system, taking advantage of a powerful mouse model developed in the Lambert lab that allows for studies of cancer outcomes in mice infected with an oncogenic mouse papillomavirus (MmuPV1), compared to mice that are genetically engineered to lack estrogen signaling.
Estrogen has long been implicated in human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated disease and play keys roles in cervical health in females. Recent studies suggest that estrogen might synergize with papillomaviruses to drive cell changes that lead to cervical cancer progression. Additionally, estrogen may suppress immune responses needed to clear papillomavirus-infected cervical cells.
Dr. Sheikh is an expert in epithelial diseases who joined the Lambert lab in 2025 after completing his PhD training in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology studying DNA damage and skin photodamage at CSIR-IIIM Jammu, India, prior to additional training with Dr. Hao Chang in the UW-Madison Department of Dermatology studying cancer cell transformation in melanoma, a major skin cancer. Dr. Sheikh states, “My goal for this project is to elucidate how estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα) shapes immune evasion during papillomavirus infection, pinpoint the critical signaling pathways involved, and generate insights that can guide the development of novel immunotherapy strategies to prevent HPV-driven cancers.”
HPV-associated cancers are prevalent in Wisconsin with thousands of diagnoses annually. There is an HPV vaccine that can prevent HPV-associated cancers. However, vaccine coverage is low in Wisconsin so that there is a continued crucial need for researchers like Dr. Sheikh to develop new and better therapies. Professor Lambert states: “Dr. Umar is an outstanding postdoc; his research looking at the influence of estrogen on cutaneous papoilloamvirus infection/pathogenesis has uncovered a critical role of estrogen in papillomavirus-associated neoplastic disease that is organ agnostic, affecting susceptibility of both males and females to papillomavirus-induced disease in animals, likely extending to humans. These important discoveries extend our understanding of the importance of this hormone in tumor virus biology and in cancer, His future research will attempt to understand the underlying mechanism by which this hormone influences papillomavirus infection/carcinogenesis”.
The Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) is a grantmaking program housed in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) since 2004 and dedicated to improving the health of citizens across the state. The WPP Postdoctoral Grant Program supports the professional development of top SMPH early career trainees and provides up to $20,000 for one year to support the completion of a research project or significant training opportunity.
The award announcement can be found here:
https://wpp.med.wisc.edu/news/record-postdoctoral-grants-awarded/