In recognition of the thousands of Asian women who are sexually trafficked from China into the United States each year, I decided to research the historical roots of sexual trafficking and the current conditions that the victims face. Historical and ongoing marginalization of communities of color into urban slums have created a foundation for illegal trafficking that is largely visible in the public eye, but the actual victims remain invisible. Current laws that are meant to help victims of sexual trafficking lack sensitivity in the intersectionality of culture, gender, and sexuality. To help victims of sexual trafficking is to put their narratives in the forefront of discussion and to give them the specialized attention that community grassroots organizations like the Garden of Hope have done.

Numerous investigations of parent-child interaction suggest that higher levels of collaboration between parents and children during free play results in children's greater engagement with the activity. A concern with these findings is that parents who are less collaborative in setting goals tend to have children who are younger than parents who are more collaborative or hands off. These children might be less naturally engaged with the activity. The present study assigned parents and 3-4-year-olds (N=82; 44 boys and 38 girls) to one of three conditions, in which parents were instructed to be directive, collaborative, or more hands-off as the dyad learned a novel causal system. Regardless of the assigned condition, children whose parents were actually more collaborative during the interaction played longer with the causal system, suggesting they were more engaged by the activity. These data suggest that the actual nature of the parent-child interaction during a free play activity relates to children's engagement, but also that parents' natural interactive with children is not easy to manipulate.

Plasma cells (PC) are found in the CNS of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, yet their source and role in MS remains unclear. We find that some PC in the CNS of mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) originate in the gut and produce immunoglobulin A (IgA). Moreover, we show that IgA⁺ PC are dramatically reduced in the gut during EAE, and likewise, a reduction in IgA-bound fecal bacteria is seen in MS patients during disease relapse. Removal of plasmablast (PB) plus PC resulted in exacerbated EAE that was normalized by the introduction of gut-derived IgA⁺ PC. Furthermore, mice with an over-abundance of IgA⁺ PB and/or PC were specifically resistant to the effector stage of EAE, and expression of interleukin (IL)-10 by PB plus PC was necessary and sufficient to confer resistance. Our data show that IgA⁺ PB and/or PC mobilized from the gut play an unexpected role in suppressing neuroinflammation.

While the preponderance of morbidity and mortality in medulloblastoma patients are due to metastatic disease, most research focuses on the primary tumor due to a dearth of metastatic tissue samples and model systems. Medulloblastoma metastases are found almost exclusively on the leptomeningeal surface of the brain and spinal cord; dissemination is therefore thought to occur through shedding of primary tumor cells into the cerebrospinal fluid followed by distal re-implantation on the leptomeninges. We present evidence for medulloblastoma circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in therapy-naive patients and demonstrate in vivo, through flank xenografting and parabiosis, that medulloblastoma CTCs can spread through the blood to the leptomeningeal space to form leptomeningeal metastases. Medulloblastoma leptomeningeal metastases express high levels of the chemokine CCL2, and expression of CCL2 in medulloblastoma in vivo is sufficient to drive leptomeningeal dissemination. Hematogenous dissemination of medulloblastoma offers a new opportunity to diagnose and treat lethal disseminated medulloblastoma.