Congratulations to Dr. Sivapriya Kailasan Vanaja for having a paper from her lab, Shiga toxin suppresses noncanonical inflammasome responses to cytosolic LPS, accepted for publication in Science Immunology. The paper first authored by Morena Mendonca, a postdoctoral fellow in the Kailasan Vanaja lab, demonstrates that Shiga toxin, a primary virulence factor of Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli, suppresses cytosolic LPS-mediated inflammasome responses by inhibiting the cleavage of gasdermin D. The findings from this study provide insights into the mechanisms by which bacterial pathogens modulate the host innate immune responses to successfully establish an infection.

Congratulations to Dr. Penghua Wang on the award of his R21 grant through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases entitled, A critical role for UBXN3B in IgG homeostasis and maternal transfer.

Dr. Beiyan Zhou has been named the winner of the 2020 Women of Innovation® Research Innovation and Leadership category from the Connecticut Technology Council and Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology. Dr. Zhou was selected by a panel of judges from over 150 nominations. Read more.

Congratulations to Dr. Penghua Wang for receiving a grant through the Office of the Vice President for Research and their COVID-19 Rapid Start Funding Program (COVID-RSF). His project is entitled Elucidation of E3 ligases in SARS-CoV2 pathogenesis.

Members of Dr. Beiyan Zhou’s laboratory will share their research at the American Heart Association Scientific Session on November 17, 2020. Dr. Chuan Li has been invited to give an oral presentation and Dr. Lili Qu and Alyssa Matz have poster presentations.

Dr. Zhichao Fan has accepted an invitation to serve as an Associate Editor of The Journal of Immunology.

Dr. Kepeng Wang collaborated with CaroGen Corporation to develop a promising clinical candidate for colorectal cancer treatment. Read more.

Congratulations to Dr. Karthik Chandiran on receiving an AAI Fellowship. This award will provide one year of salary support to study the molecular mechanisms that guide the fate determination of activated cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

The Connecticut Technology Council and Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology has named Dr. Beiyan Zhou as a 2020 Women of Innovation® (WOI) finalist in the Research Innovation and Leadership category. Dr. Zhou was selected by a panel of judges from over 150 nominations.

Congratulations to Dr. Beiyan Zhou and Dr. Anthony Vella on the award of their new R01 through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases entitled, “MiR-150 regulated adipose tissue B cells in obesity”. Dr. Zhou will serve as Communicating PI on this project which delineate a novel regulatory loop of small RNA molecules, microRNA, that can impose regulation on gene expression, on B cells that are found in adipose tissue during obesity. The collaborative team will test the idea that this circuit of regulation between microRNA and B cells in fat tissue is a major mechanism that controls the damaging inflammation. We postulate that understanding this process will lead to important therapeutic opportunities to treat metabolic disease that result from obesity.