Dr. Andrei Medvedev gave a presentation on September 16, 2016 at the 2016 Society for Leukocyte Biology (SLB) meeting in Verona, Italy, entitled, “Deficiency in IRAK-4 Activity Attenuates Manifestations of Murine Lupus”
The Office of Faculty Affairs is delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate our faculty – researchers, clinicians, and educators. Each faculty they spotlight has been selected from recent nominations we received from our department chairs, center directors, and educational leadership. Our own Dr. Linda Cauley received a nomination.
Mai Fujiwara was selected for an oral presentation at the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) 2016 meeting in Boston on Friday, June 24th. Her presentation focused on a topic with potentially important therapeutic implications in cancer immunotherapy – the relationship between Cbl-b deficiency and resistance of T cells and NK cells to PD-L1/PD-1 regulation.
Joe Ryan received the 2016 Lepow Award at the Graduate Student Research Day on June 10, 2016. This award, established in 1986 in honor of Dr. Irwin H. Lepow, a well-known faculty member, researcher and founding father of UConn Health, is given to the outstanding fourth-year student in the Biomedical Science Ph.D. Program. Joe is an M.D./Ph.D. student in the Department of Immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Adam Adler and Dr. Anthony Vella.
Dr. Robert Clark, Professor in the Department of Immunology, was selected as the 2016 co-recipient of the Osborn Biomedical Science Graduate Teaching Award. The intention of this award is to recognize a UConn Health graduate school faculty member for his or her commitment to providing the best education in the classroom and training in the laboratory.
In partnership with the School of Medicine and the School of Dental Medicine, the Office of the Vice President for Research awarded six Research Excellence Program (REP) Convergence Grants. Dr. Andrei Medvedev received one of those awards for his project entitled, “Pharmacological Inhibition of Mal as a Therapeutic Approach in Lupus.” Dr. Santhanam Lakshminarayanan from the Department of Rheumatology serves as collaborator.
The Laura Haynes lab has published three first author papers related to how aging impacts the immune response to influenza infection. Erica Lorenzo’s publication appears in Oncotarget, April Masters’ publication appears in Scientific Reports, Dr. Jenna Bartley’s publication appears in Aging.
Dr. Kamal Khanna is one of the recipients of UConn Health’s 2016 SPARK Grant Competition. These awards aim to help investigators move ideas into the earliest stages of commercialization and development. Dr. Khanna’s project is focused on determining the efficacy of novel vaccine technology developed by Carogen Corporation in preventing and treating Clostridium Difficile infections, which are the most commonly acquired infections in hospitals.
