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Welcome to our two newest faculty members:    
Tanya Freedman, PhD and Ingunn Stromnes, PhD.

The Center for Immunology would like to welcome Dr. Tanya Freedman, Department of Pharmacology  and Dr. Ingunn Stromnes, Department of Microbiology and Immunology to our group in WMBB.  Dr. Freedman came to the University after doing a post doctoral training with Dr. Arthur Weiss at UCSF.  Her lab at the University of Minnesota will build on her biochemistry and cell signaling background to continue the investigation of translational applications in tumor-associated and inflammatory macrophages.  Dr. Stromnes comes from the Greenberg lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.  Her laboratory will focus on developing and testing novel strategies to engineer T lymphocytes to safely eliminate recalcitrant cancers.  

Congratulations on faculty promotions and tenure!!

Please join the Center for Immunology in congratulating the following colleagues on their recent academic achievements:  Dr. Alex Khoruts and Dr. David Masopust have been promoted to a Professor.   Dr. Brian Fife and Dr. Vaiva Vezys have been promoted to an Associate Professor.  Dr. Tanya Freedman was awarded tenure.  This list shows the extraordinary caliber of our faculty at every stage of their careers while continuing to produce outstanding research, teaching and service to our students and community.  We all have reason to be very proud of their high quality research and accomplishments.

Dr. Marc Jenkins is the recipient of the 2017 Medical School Carole J. Bland Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award!

Congratulations to Dr. Jenkins on being selected as the recipient of the 2017 Medical School Carole J. Bland Outstanding Faculty Mentor award! This award is meant to recognize the process by which faculty serves as role models for each other, promoting the professional development of others and creating a supportive, positive working environment.  Dr. Jenkins was presented the award at the Medical School Promotion and Tenure Reception on June 15, 2017.  

In an April 2017 Nature Immunology article, Farrar and colleagues propose a potential strategy for inhibiting progenitor B cells from becoming cancerous.

A research team led by Michael Farrar, Professor and Utz Chair in Fundamental Immunobiology, investigated transcription factor networks as prognostic markers of disease severity.  They report their findings in “Antagonism of B cell enhancer networks by STAT5 drives leukemia and poor patient survival” published in Nature Immunology.

In earlier studies Farrar identified the transcription factor STAT5 as key to the transformation of progenitor B cells into leukemic cells, though the underlying mechanism for transformation was unclear.  In the newly published paper he and colleagues identify regulatory competition between STAT5 and the transcription factors IKAROS and NF-κB.  The STAT5 interaction with the IKAROS - NF-κB network serves as a “molecular switch” governing the proliferation, survival and differentiation of progenitor B cells.  The authors found that high regulatory imbalance between these antagonistic transcription-factor networks serves as a marker for severe disease and poor response to therapy.  They propose that addressing the regulatory imbalance is a potential strategy for inhibiting progenitor B cells from becoming cancerous.

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