Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology ePanel, September 10, 2024

On September 10, 2024, Keystone Symposia will host a free ePanel event featuring the recipients of the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This international prize is a collaboration between the  Michelson Medical Research Foundation and Science to support young investigators doing transformative research in human immunology, based on work done in the past three years. The winner is awarded $30,000 and the publication of his or her essay in Science. 

The goal of the prize is to accelerate immunology advances with trans-disease applications towards vaccine and immunotherapy innovation.  The live ePanel event will feature this year's Grand Prize winner Bingxu Liu, and Finalists Carla Nowosad and Gabriele Casirati, who represent cutting edge research across innate immune sensing and protection, adaptive memory and surveillance and targeted cancer immunotherapies.  Each will present their groundbreaking work and answer live audience questions about the forefront of vaccine and immunotherapy development during the upcoming live ePanel event.  

Read about the awardees and their innovative research below

Welcome remarks will be  by Dr. Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies and Michelson Medical Research Foundation,  Bill Moran, Publisher of AAAS/Science and Holden Thorp, Editor in Chief of AAAS/Science.

Register now for this free ePanel Event! 

#MichelsonPrizes

Bingxu Liu – Grand Prize

Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington

Protons are the new first responders to danger: Human STING’s newfound function as a channel expands our understanding of immunity

The human immune system senses danger signals and carries out different responses. It remains a mystery how the Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING), a critical innate immune sensor, can induce a wide range of downstream responses upon activation. Using a combination of genetic, biochemical, and structural tools, my colleagues and I discovered that human STING plays a surprising role as a proton channel. Identifying STING as the first immune-sensing channel extends our understanding of the functional diversity of immune responses. The agonist similarity and functional divergence between bacterial and human STING suggest the possibility of modularly engineering sensing and functional units of innate immune proteins for improved immunotherapies.

Bingxu Liu grew up in a village town in Henna, the central part of China. He received undergraduate degrees from Zhejiang University and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, where he works on exploring and overcoming the limitations of natural biological systems.

Carla Nowosad – Finalist
Department of Pathology, Langone Grossman School of Medicine, New York University

Who goes there? How B cells assess risk in the intestine

B cells essentially contribute to intestinal immunity through the production of large quantities of
antibodies. Most intestinal antibodies are produced via germinal centers (GCs), which despite being chronically present in healthy gut-associated lymphoid tissue, were poorly understood in terms of their ontogeny and antigenic drivers. Using multicolor fate-mapping with the Confetti fluorescent allele to visualize GC clonal expansions, single-color GCs were observed in the steady-state intestine, suggesting strong antigen-driven selection events. By coupling fate-mapping, model microbiomes, and Ig sequencing, we showed that gut-GCs selected clones with increasing affinity to members of the microbiome. Mapping how antibody responses are generated in the absence of infection has major implications for understanding proper control of the microbiome, known to be an important determinant of many disease outcomes.

Carla Nowosad received undergraduate degrees from the University of Warwick and a Ph.D. from the Francis Crick Institute, National Institute for Medical Research Mill Hill. After completing her
postdoctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University, she started her laboratory in the department of
Pathology and the Translational Immunology Center at New York University Grossman School of
Medicine in late 2021. Her research focuses on how B cells make decisions in the complex
microenvironment of the intestine.