While our mission remains the same, our updated visual identity represents innovation, collaboration, and the future of immunology research.

Take a look around the newly updated website and let us know what you think!

“The intestine is densely populated by anaerobic commensal bacteria. These microorganisms shape immune system development, but our understanding of host–commensal interactions is hampered by a lack of tools for studying the anaerobic intestinal environment. We applied metabolic oligosaccharide engineering and bioorthogonal click-chemistry to label various commensal anaerobes, including Bacteroides fragilis, a common and immunologically important commensal. We studied the dissemination of... read more

Immunoglobulin A (IgA) induction primarily occurs in intestinal Peyer’s patches (PPs). However, the cellular interactions necessary for IgA class switching are poorly defined. Here we show that in mice, activated B cells use the chemokine receptor CCR6 to access the subepithelial dome (SED) of PPs. There, B cells... read more

Immediately following birth, the gastrointestinal tract is colonized by diverse microbial species. Establishing proper immune responses to these microbes is essential to ensure optimal growth and overall health during the neonatal development period. Along with commensal microbes, mammalian mothers provide nutrients and immunomodulatory factors to their young through breast milk. By comparing offspring of antibody sufficient and deficient mothers, we found that antibodies derived from breast milk were required to limit mucosal effector CD4+ T cell responses in neonatal mice. Within breast milk, IgA is the most abundant antibody isotype, and IgA antibodies have long been appreciated to mediate host-commensal mutualism. Surprisingly, we observed that young mice lacking maternal IgA did not exhibit the same phenotype as mice lacking all maternal antibodies indicating that other antibody isotypes present in breast milk help dampen mucosal T cell immunity.

We developed a flow cytometry assay to profile the complete anti-commensal antibody response and found, surprisingly, that in addition to IgA, healthy... read more