News
November 2024 - Mass. doctor leads new type of cell therapy offering hope to lupus patients
Roberto Caricchio, MD, featured on WCVB 5's Chronicle where he discussed CAR T cell therapy treatment for lupus patients. Watch the feature.
Other recent news
October 2024 -
- Pukkila-Worley lab publishes companion papers examining immune response in C. elegans. Read the story on UMass Chan news.
- Fiachra Humphries, PhD, in collaboration with Dr. Shuo Yang of the Collaborative Innovation Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, China, review the emerging roles of mitochondrial ECSIT in immunity and cancer in Trends in Cell Biology. Read the review.
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Neal Silverman, PhD, in collaboration with Drs. Soojin Lee and Fen-Biao Gao of the UMass Chan RNA Therapeutics Institute, explore the relationship between antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and sleep regulation, memory formation, as well as traumatic brain injury in neurodegenerative diseases in their recent review in Trends in Neurosciences. Read the review.
September 2024 -
- Prabhani Atukorale, PhD, and Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, develop dual therapeutic that holds promise as pancreatic cancer treatment. Read the story on UMass Chan news.
August 2024 -
- Egil Lien, PhD, and Kate Fitzgerald, PhD, awarded funding to investigate the role of splicing factors in inflammation and cytotoxicity. Read the story on DoM news.
- Douglas Golenbock, MD, was celebrated at Innate Immunity Day 2024. Learn more about the event on DoM news.
July 2024 -
- Roberto Caricchio, MD, leading collaborative CAR T cell therapy trial in Lupus at UMass Chan. Learn more about the trial on UMass Chan News.
- Ann Marshak-Rothstein, PhD, among team that received research award from the Dan and Diane Riccio Fund for Neuroscience. Learn more on UMass Chan News.
June 2024 -
- Orzalli lab demonstrates Herpes Simplex Virus 1 inhibits antiviral pathway in skin cells. Read the paper in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
- Neal Silverman, PhD, receives R21 funding to study frontotemporal dementia. Read the story on DoM news.
- Program in Innate Immunity investigators welcome summer interns to the Moormann, Silverman, Fitzgerald, Humphries, Gallucci, Caricchio, Pukkila-Worley, and Thompson labs.
- Evelyn Kurt-Jones, PhD, and the late Robert Finberg, MD, were among the authors on a new paper in Nature Communications on the protective role for ADAM9 protein in virus-induced myocarditis. Read the story on DoM news.
May 2024 -
- Stefania Gallucci, MD, is featured as the Researcher Spotlight for the month of May. Read the full spotlight here.
- Kate Fitzgerald, PhD, has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Thomas A. Waldmann Award for Excellence in Human Immunology. As the recipient of this prestigious award, Dr. Fitzgerald will give a lecture on nucleic acid sensing pathways in health and disease at the 19th International Symposium on Inborn Error of Immunity and will be presented with a crystal trophy at their gala event in November 2024. Read the full story.
April 2024 -
- Program in Innate Immunity faculty shine at 2024 UMass Chan Educational Recognition Awards & Last Lecture. Ann Moormann, PhD, received the Chancellor's Award in Excellence in Mentoring, Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, received the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Graduate Educatio, and Megan Orzalli, PhD, received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Research Mentoring and Commitment to Student Professional Advancement. Congratulations to all! Read the full story.
- Lee Quinton, PhD, is featured in the April Department of Medicine's Researcher Spotlight. Learn about Dr. Quinton's work.
- Egil Lien, PhD, receives R21 funding to study fundamental mechanisms related to cell death in new project, "Regulation of Ninj1Oligomerization and Cell Membrane Ruptures During Cell Death.” Read the full article.
February 2024 - Fiachria Humphries, PhD, is one of three investigators at UMass Chan Medical School investigating the potential connection to and impact of long COVID on neurodegenerative disease -- a study funded by the PolyBio Research Foundation. Learn more about their project.
January 2024 - Stefania Gallucci, MD, recently received R21 funding from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for her project titled, “Reprogramming of the Innate Immunometabolism by Bacterial Biofilms.” Dr. Gallucci and colleagues will explore the innate immune response against bacterial biofilms through the characterization of the transcriptional and metabolic changes occurring in dendritic cells (DC) upon recognition of bacterial amyloids. She hopes to reveal new metabolic pathways as novel therapeutic candidates, starting with the purine pathway, an understudied pathway in DC biology, to strengthen innate responses against biofilm-driven infections.
December 2023 - Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, has been elected as a 2024 member of The American Society of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Pukkila-Worley is one of 100 Active and International Members to receive this honor. He will be officially inducted into the Society at the ASCI Dinner and New Member Induction Ceremony on April 5, 2024, as part of the AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
November 2023 - Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, along with MD/PhD students and lab members, Mohamad Nasrallah and Nick Peterson, recently had a manuscript published in PLOS Pathogens titled, “Transcriptional suppression of sphingolipid catabolism controls pathogen resistance in C. elegans.” Read the full article.
September 2023 - Egil Lien, PhD, is featured in the September Department of Medicine's Researcher Spotlight. Learn more about Dr. Lien's work.
August 2023 - John Harris, MD, PhD, Fiachra Humphries, PhD, and Ann Marshak-Rothstein, PhD, are among 13 faculty who have been awarded UMass Chan BRIDGE funding. The BRIDGE Fund supports critical research milestones for inventions and discoveries that have high potential to change the course of disease. The funding will mitigate investment risk by producing key data sets that would provide an attractive entry-point for partners and investors. Learn more about their projects.
July 2023 - Lee Quinton, PhD, was recently awarded new R01 funding from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor-1 (LOX-1) as a protective countermeasure in response to lung infection.
July 2023 - Kate Fitzgerald, PhD and Ann Marshak-Rothstein, PhD, have been awarded a competing renewal for their NIH T32: Training in the Molecular Basis of Autoimmunity and Autoinflammation (also known as the Autoimmunity and Autoinflammation Training Grant or AATG).
June 2023 - Roberto Caricchio, MD, is leading the launch of the Lupus Center at UMass Chan, a new research and clinical care center at UMass Chan Medical School, in collaboration with UMass Memorial Health. Read more.
May 2023 - Liraz Galia, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Kate Fitzgerald, PhD, Samantha Tse, MD/PhD student in the lab of Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, and Kevin Gao, MD/PhD student in the labs of Dr. Fitzgerald and Ann Marshak-Rothstein, PhD, professor of medicine will present their research. Read more
April 2023 - Roberto Caricchio, MD, is featured on a recent episode of Voices of UMass Chan, where he describes a new lupus program launching at UMass Chan in collaboration with UMass Memorial. Listen to the podcast.
March 2023 - Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, and MD/PhD students Nicholas D. Peterson and Samantha Y. Tse describes a new manner of detecting microbial infection that intercepts pathogen-derived signals of growth to assess the relative threat of virulent bacteria in Immunity. Read more.
February 2023 - Sanjay Ram, MD, and Peter Rice, MD, explain risk of spread in novel gonorrhea strain. Read more.
January 2023 - Douglas Golenbock, MD, featured in the Department of Medicine's Researcher Spotlight. Read more.
December 2022 - 2023 Call for Applications! The Program in Innate Immunity is thrilled to announce an open competition for RISE: The Robert W. Finberg, MD Memorial Research Training Awards. Learn more.
November 2022 - Save the Date! The 2023 Innate Immunity Day: Cell Death will be held on May 10, 2023. More info.
October 2022 - Scientists in the Silverman Lab, Program in Innate Immunity publish new findings on the role of transporter SLC46A2 on psoriatic skin inflammation. Read more.
September 2022 - Welcome to the 2022-23 Autoimmunity and Autoinflammation Training Grant and Innate Immunity Training Grant Trainees!
August 2022 - Ann Marshak-Rothstein, PhD's Work Featured in Journal of Immunology’s “Pillars of Immunology” Commentary
July 2022 - Stuart Levitz, MD, has been awarded R01 funding to for his project, "A subunit Cryptococcus vaccine".
Kate Fitzgerald, PhD, has been awarded BRIDGE Funding by the UMass Chan BRIDGE Innovation and Business Development office, for two projects with commercialization potential to study the "Development of inhibitors of ASC-dependent Inflammasomes for the treatment of inflammatory diseases” and“Development of STING inhibitors for the treatment of inflammatory diseases”
June 2022 - Fiachra Humphries, PhD, has been selected to receive one of the highly competitive Child Health Awards from the Charles H. Hood Foundation to study, “The role of MARCO in pediatric cancer.”
- Fiachra Humphries, Ph.D., has joined the Department of Medicine faculty as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Innate Immunity and the Program in Innate Immunity. Learn more about Dr. Humphries' work.
- Zaida Ramirez-Ortiz, Ph.D., has been promoted to a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and the Program in Innate Immunity. Learn more about Dr. Ramirez-Ortiz's work.