Dr. Kee's research investigates the role of transcription factors of the E2 family in lymphocyte development and carcinogenesis. The AAI award honors the memory of Dr. Cynthia Chambers and was established to advance the career of junior scientists, specifically in the area of cancer biology. Dr. Kee will present her research at the next Annual Meeting of the American Association of Immunolgists, held May 12-16, 2006 in Boston, MA.

Katie Sawai presented a poster entitled "A unique role for cyclin D3 in early B cell development".

In a paper now in press in Nature Immunology entitled "Hedgehog signaling controls thymocyte progenitor homeostasis and differentiation in the thymus" and co-first authored by postdoc Abdel El Andaloussi and MSTP student Stephanie Graves, the lab used T cell specific conditional deletions of the Hedgehog receptor Smoothened to demonstrate that the Hedgehog signaling pathway is one of the important regulators of lymphocyte progenitor development in the thymus.

Ruth Taniguchi's thesis research in the Kumar laboratory focuses on the function of the surface receptor 2B4 expressed at the surface of mouse and human NK cells. Ruth is in her 3rd year of graduate studies in the Committee on Immunology at the University of Chicago.

While FADD is a well-established regulator of apoptosis mediated by Death Receptors such as CD95 (APO-1/Fas), a number of studies have indicated interferences with cell cycle and cell proliferation. The Peter lab has now uncovered the role of Caseine Kinase Iα as regulator of FADD through phosphorylation of Serine 194. FADD and CKIα colocalize on the spindle poles in cell metaphase, representing a crucial event during mitosis. This pathway also regulates the ability of Taxol to arrest cells in mitosis, raising the possibility that compounds that activate CKIα to increase FADD phosphorylation may act as chemosensitizers for cancer treatment (E. Alapatt et al., Molecular Cell 2005, 19, 321-332)

Erin Adams, PhD, joins the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology as an Assistant Professor. Erin trained at Stanford with Peter Parham (graduate studies) and Chris Garcia (postdoctoral research). A biochemist and crystallographer, she elucidated the first structure of a TCRγδ bound to its ligand.

David Boone, PhD, joins the Department of Medicine, Center for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases as an Assistant Professor. David trained with Averil Ma at the University of Chicago then at UC San Francisco and made major contributions to the understanding of inflammation and NF?ß regulation in the intestinal mucosa through novel biochemical mechanisms of ubiquitination.

Sasha Chervonsky, PhD, joins the Department of Pathology as an Associate Professor with tenure. Sasha’s laboratory studies the development of Peyer’s patches in the small bowel, the role of endothelial cells in antigen presentation in autoimmune Type I Diabetes and the role of MHC in central tolerance.

Tanya Golovkina, PhD, joins the Department of Microbiology as an Associate Professor with tenure. Tanya’s laboratory studies models of retroviral induction of mammary tumors in mouse and has discovered entirely new ways in which retroviruses manipulate the immune system.

Bana Jabri MD, PhD, who joined the Faculty at the University of Chicago in 2002 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology with secondary appointments in Pediatrics and Medicine, was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Bana’s laboratory is in the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and studies Celiac Disease, a human disease resulting from an aberrant immune response in the small bowel to the gluten found in wheat. Her work has elucidated the mechanism leading to the destruction of intestinal epithelial cells by intraepithelial lymphocytes in patients with celiac disease. More generally, her research demonstrates new elements of a cross talk between the tissue and the immune system that regulates cytolytic responses in the mucosal environment.

Shayla Hesse and Dustin Guzior, two University of Chicago undergraduate students, received a Best Presentation Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Research Program for their studies in COI laboratories.

Shayla Hesse has been working in the Alegre lab and presented her unexpected observation that reduced T cell NF-kB promotes the formation of anti-nuclear antibodies in a mouse model of lupus. Dustin Guzior was working in the Kumar lab, establishing a role for 2B4 in NK cell self-tolerance.