Targeted Approaches to Optimize Immune Responses:
Learning from Primary Immune Disorders
THE PROBLEM
Single gene variants in humans can disrupt normal lymphocyte signaling and homeostasis, resulting in immune deficiency, autoimmunity, and lymphoid malignancy. Mechanistic studies of these disorders can illuminate new targets for regulating abnormal immune responses in many disease scenarios that affect both civilian and military populations, including infections, immunodeficiency, allergy, lymphoproliferative disease, and lymphoma/leukemia.
WHAT WE'RE DOING
The Snow Lab investigates aberrations in signaling, metabolic and cell death pathways in B and T cell lymphocytes within these disease contexts, with the goal of developing therapeutic strategies that rebalance and optimize adaptive immune responses in the broader context of immune deficiency, autoimmunity, lymphoproliferative disease, and cancer. As part of this research, we have also taken a leading role in characterizing novel primary immune disorders caused by mutations in the lymphocyte scaffold molecule CARD11, a crucial regulator of lymphocyte antigen receptor signaling.