Through work in his laboratory, immunology researcher Dr. Borges da Silva aims to understand how extracellular nucleotides regulate the immune system. He aims to determine how extracellular ATP (eATP) affects transcriptional, metabolic and functional mechanisms of CD8-positive T cells in response to viral infections and cancer. This stems from fundamental discoveries made by Dr. Borges da Silva that showed a crucial role for the eATP purinergic receptor P2RX7 in the establishment of CD8-positive T cell memory.