Just as hair color and height vary greatly among individuals, so do their immune system responses — and the study of these variations may lead to more nuanced understanding of the immune system, with Stanford researchers leading the way.
Stanford researchers have been awarded a $17.1 million grant to fund research in the recently established Stanford Human Immune Monitoring Research Center, awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health.
Stanford is one of six entities receiving the NIAID grant. The participating institutions comprise a consortium that will coordinate and communicate under one administrative infrastructure.
According to its website, the NIAID issued grants to “capitalize on recent advances in immune profiling to measure the diversity of human immune responses under a variety of conditions.” Scientists refer to this diversity as heterogeneity.
The initiative’s goal is not to simply describe the human immune profiles, but also to examine how these profiles react and adapt to changes in the body.
The team, led by Mark Davis, professor of microbiology and immunology, will characterize the normal human immune system by tracking immune responses to vaccinations, specifically influenza and shingles.
By conducting vaccinations, taking blood samples and measuring immune responses, the center expects to identify strategies to improve immune responses.
Because immune responses to viral infections or vaccinations differ among healthy individuals, one research objective “is to define [this] heterogeneity of an immune response and to identify signatures for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ responses,” said Jorg Goronzy, a project leader and professor of immunology and rheumatology. In addition to Davis and Gorgonzy, other project leaders include Andrew Fire, Harry Greenberg, Daphne Koller and Paul Utz.
Although some factors contributing to immune heterogeneity, such as age, are known, “we do not have a good understanding of heterogeneity and how to measure it,” Gorgonzy said.
The federal grant anticipates that studying this heterogeneity by human immune profiling will likely reveal new understanding of the relationship between the immune system and the rest of the body.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will fund the project for the first year, with subsequent years to be funded by the NIAID.
Under a previous grant, Davis established the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, which aims to develop immunological tools for use in patient care and preventative medicine.
Together, the Stanford Human Immune Monitoring Research Center and the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection reflect the current need to understand immune system heterogeneity with the objective of preventing age-dependent diseases often contributed to by the immune system.