George Agak Lab
George Agak Lab — About the Principal Investigator
Dr. George W. Agak is an Associate Professor in the Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a member of the UCLA Immunology, Inflammation, Infection, and Transplantation (I3T) research theme and the MBI. His research program focuses on the immunology of the skin, host–microbe interactions, and inflammatory skin diseases.
Dr. Agak earned his Bachelor of Science in Biology (First Class Honors) from the University of Nairobi. He was awarded the prestigious Chevening and Leverhulme Scholarships to pursue graduate studies at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where he obtained a Master of Science degree in Immunology.
He completed his doctoral training at the University of Lausanne under the mentorship of Dr. Giampietro Corradin, where his research focused on vaccine development. In 2010, Dr. Agak joined UCLA for postdoctoral training under the mentorship of Dr. Jenny Kim in the Division of Dermatology, where he investigated the immunopathogenesis of acne and immune responses to skin commensal bacteria.
Research — George Agak Laboratory (UCLA)
The Agak Lab investigates how the skin immune system senses and responds to commensal and pathogenic microbes, with a particular emphasis on the molecular and cellular mechanisms that drive inflammation and disease. Our work focuses on host–microbe interactions in the skin, especially immune responses to Cutibacterium acnes, and how microbial dysbiosis contributes to inflammatory skin disorders.
A central goal of the lab is to define how innate and adaptive immune pathways are activated by skin bacteria and how these responses shape tissue inflammation, immune memory, and disease progression. Using human tissues, primary immune cells, and clinically relevant disease models, we study cytokine signaling networks, antigen presentation, and immune cell–microbe crosstalk that underlie both protective and pathological responses in the skin.
Our research integrates high-throughput and systems-level approaches, including transcriptomic and metagenomic profiling, immune phenotyping, and proteomics, to map immune landscapes in healthy and diseased skin. We also employ biochemical and mass spectrometry–based strategies to characterize macromolecular interactions between microbial factors and host immune machinery, providing mechanistic insight into how skin bacteria influence immune function.
The Agak Lab is strongly committed to translational research. Through extensive collaborations at UCLA, nationally, and internationally, we work to bridge basic immunology with clinical dermatology, with the long-term goal of developing targeted immunomodulatory therapies and microbiome-based interventions for inflammatory skin diseases.
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