Penn Institute for Immunology

Congratulations to IFI Faculty Members

Wistar/Penn investigators awarded Martin Delaney Collaboratory research grant

The NIH has awarded a nearly $23 million Martin Delaney Collaboratory for HIV Cure Research grant to a consortium of top HIV researchers led by IFI co-principal investigators Luis Montaner, D.V.M, D.Phil, director of the HIV-1 Immunopathogenesis Laboratory at The Wistar Institute Vaccine Center, and James L. Riley, Ph.D., research associate professor in the department of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine.

The Philadelphia-based BEAT-HIV Delaney Collaboratory to Cure HIV project is one of six grants awarded by the Delaney initiative, joining a highly-selective group of U.S.-led teams charged with advancing the global efforts to develop a cure for HIV. The five-year award promotes a preeminent partnership of more than 30 leading HIV investigators working with government, non-profit, and industry partners to test the combinations of several novel immunotherapies under new clinical trials.

For more information: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2016/Pages/Delaney-awards.aspx

Congratulating Two Previous IFI Pilot Awardees

Aimee Payne, MD, PhD 

IFI Pilot Award "Desmoglein 3 chimeric autoantibody receptor (CAAR)-engineered T cells: a novel strategy for treatment of pemphigus vulgaris"

The IFI Pilot funds allowed the Payne lab to work collaboratively with the Milone lab to develop an innovative strategy to use autoantigens as chimeric T cell receptors to target autoreactive B cells. The Payne lab engineered human T cells to express a chimeric autoantibody receptor (CAAR), consisting of the pemphigus vulgaris (PV) autoantigen, desmoglein (Dsg) 3, fused to T cell cytoplasmic signaling domains. This work has demonstrated that CAAR-T cells can provide an effective and potentially universal strategy for targeting autoreactive B cells as a novel therapy for antibody-mediated autoimmune disease.

Read paper here

Matthew Weitzman, PhD

IFI Pilot Award "The role of cellular chromatin factors in intrinsic antiviral defense"

The IFI pilot award helped to launch a number of collaborative projects and led the Weitzman lab in new areas of chromatin biology. Among these, the Weitzman lab developed a technique to isolate replicating viral DNA from infected cells and combine this with mass spectrometry to identify cellular proteins associated with viral genomes. This powerful new technique has revealed the recruitment of multiple chromatin remodeling complexes to viral DNA.  Together with Ben Garcia’s lab, the Weitzman lab has developed mass spectrometry methods to analyze the composition of cellular chromatin during virus infections and investigate how viral proteins alter histones. 

Read paper here

Congratulations to our Institute for Immunology Pilot Grant Awardees

PI: Andy Minn, M.D., Ph.D.
"Identifying Mediators of an Interferon-Driven Resistance Program to Immune Checkpoint Blockade in Cancer"

PI: Laura Su, M.D., Ph.D.
"Defining the role of pre-existing memory T cells in human immunization responses to yellow fever vaccine"

Penn Joins Sean Parker Cancer Research Effort

The University of Pennsylvania has joined a first-of-its-kind research collaboration, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, aimed at accelerating the development of new immunotherapies to fight cancer, reportsThe New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and several other national outlets. The venture is backed by a $250 million gift from the Parker Foundation, making it the largest single contribution ever made to the field of immunotherapy.  Carl June, MD,  a professor in Immunotherapy in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center, will serve as the Parker Institute’s Penn director. Robert Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, a professor in Cancer Research and associate director of translational research in the ACC, and John Wherry, PhD, a professor of Microbiology and director of Penn’s Institute for Immunology, will serve as co-directors.

Please find all press releases Below:
UPHS
NY Times
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
The Verge

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