William McCoy, PhD
dermatology, human-microbe interaction impact on disease, nutritional immunity, micronutrients, skin pathogens
- Email: mccoyw@nospam.wustl.edu
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Keywords:
dermatology, human-microbe interaction impact on disease, nutritional immunity, micronutrients, skin pathogens
Research:
The McCoy Lab seeks to better understand how human-microbe interactions impact disease. The McCoy Lab at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine (WUSM) opened on July 1, 2021. As a practicing dermatologist, the lab’s principal investigator (PI: William H. McCoy IV, M.D., Ph.D.) has focused many of the lab’s investigations on interactions that occur at epithelial barrier sites, like human skin. In the McCoy Lab, we are particularly interested in studying nutritional immunity, a part of the innate immune system that restricts microbial growth by sequestering micronutrients (e.g., transition metals like iron). Nutritional immunity is an understudied component of human barrier defense, and our lab believes that it serves an integral role by supporting healthy skin microbes and restricting the growth of skin pathogens.