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Dr. Nandan Gokhale Awarded Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship

11/13/2020

Congratulations to Dr. Nandan Gokhale on receiving a three-year Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship award. Way to go Nandan!

The Helen Hay Whitney Foundation provides support for early postdoctoral research training in all basic biomedical sciences with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of imaginative, well-trained and dedicated medical scientists. A very prestigious award; on average, only 5% of applications receive funding.

UW Immunology News

Rachel secures ITHS fellowship!

7/9/2020

New 2020 TL1 Program Cohort Joins ITHS
ITHS is very pleased to welcome 16 new trainees to its TL1 Translational Research Training Program for the 2020-2021 cohort. The ITHS TL1 program is a one-year mentored research training program in translational science for predoctoral students. This program creates a cross-disciplinary community of emerging researchers and provides them with specific training, career development opportunities, and team science skills to help them function effectively within translational science teams. We look forward to supporting these trainees while they grow and develop as translational researchers.

Ram lab members on a roll!!!

3/20/2019

Fellowships awarded in 2017-18
Adriana Forero -T32 Cardio vascular pathology TG
Solomon and Julian Smith -T32 Immunology TG
Matthew Hendricks -T32 Pathobiology TG
Frank Soveg - T32 CMB TG

Congrats Frank !!!!

3/20/2019

Frank received F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. This competitive and prestigious NIH predoctoral fellowship will support his dissertation research. The title of his project is “Defining the roles of OAS1 isoforms in RNA virus immunity.” Frank is interested in how the cell-intrinsic innate response to viruses achieves specificity. One way he believes this is happening is through isoform diversification of antiviral genes such as oligo adenylate synthetase 1 (OAS1). By producing isoforms with different antiviral specificities, the immune system can recognize and respond to different viral threats.

Congratulations Dr. Joslyn !!!

8/16/2018

Rochelle successfully defended her PhD thesis on August 15th 2018!!!

Students from Mukogawa University, Japan visit Ram Lab

10/1/2017

Pharmacy students from Mukogawa Women's University, Hyōgo, Japan visited Ram Lab on August 24th 2017. They spent the afternoon listening to the research conducted in the Ram lab as well as learning molecular biology techniques.

Travel Grants and Poster Awards !!!

10/1/2017

Johannes Schwerk and Adriana Forero win travel grants to present at Cytokines 2017 in Kanazawa Japan.

Frank Soveg wins a poster award at UW Immunology retreat !!

Ram Lab biked 32 miles to 192 Brewing co !!!!

6/18/2017

Dr. Adriana Forero is the recipient of the cardiovascular pathology training grant!

12/12/2016

Dr. Forero is awarded the CVP training grant to study the role of myomiRs in controlling interferon signaling and inflammation in the heart.

For more information see http://courses.washington.edu/cvptg/

Hepatitis C tricks liver cells to sabotage immune defenses

11/16/2016

The virus that causes hepatitis C protects itself by blocking signals that drive elements of liver cells’ immune defenses, University of Washington researchers report in a new study. “The finding helps explain why many patients fail certain drug treatments, and should help develop more effective alternate treatment protocols,” said Ram Savan, a UW assistant professor of immunology and the study's corresponding author. Hepatitis C virus is the most common cause of chronic hepatitis and the leading U.S. cause of liver cancer. It is primarily spread through contact with infected blood. Each year, more than 30,000 Americans become infected and as many as 85 percent develop life-long chronic infections. Of these patients, about one in 10 will eventually develop cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Ram Savan is a UW assistant professor of immunology. In the new study, lead author Abigail Jarret, now a graduate student at Yale University, and colleagues showed that hepatitis C virus sabotages liver cell antiviral defenses by blunting the effect of key immune proteins called interferons. When cells become infected, they release interferons, which in turn spur hundreds of genes that generate virus-fighting proteins within the cell. Interferons can even cause cells to self-destruct to prevent the virus from propagating. One of these interferons, called interferon-alpha, has been used for many years to treat chronic hep C virus infections, either alone or in concert with an antiviral called ribavirin. These treatments helped many patients clear their virus, but the treatment fails to cure more than 60 percent of patients. Newer, more effective drugs with fewer side effects have now largely replaced interferon-based therapies. However it was not clear why interferon treatment failed so often. In their study, the UW researchers hypothesized that the virus' ability to evade interferons was related to the cells themselves. In a previous study, Savan’s research team discovered that when hepatitis C virus invades a liver cell, the virus induces the cell to activate two genes -- MYH7 and MYH7B -- that are usually active only in smooth skeletal muscle and cardiac cells. Once activated, these genes produced two microRNAs, molecules that can interfere with the production of other proteins. Savan and colleagues showed that these microRNAs interfered with the cell’s production of two interferons. Thus, by activating the MYH7 and MYH7B genes, the invading hep C viruses limit liver cells' ability to generate these interferons and blunt the cells’ ability to resist and clear the virus. In the new study, published today in Nature Medicine, the investigators showed that these virally-induced microRNAs also inhibit production of a receptor crucial to the cell's interferon-driven antiviral response. Thus, these hepatitis C virus-induced microRNAs can blunt liver cell interferon-driven antiviral defenses in two ways, Jarret explained. First, the virus inhibits the cell’s ability to produce its own type III interferons, and, second, it prevents the cells from making the receptors needed in order for type I interferons to be effective. “This may in part explain why interferon treatments, which harness a type I interferon, fail in so many patients,” Jarret said. This project was funded partly by the National Institutes of Health (AI108765, AI060389, AI40035, CA148068, HHSN261200800001E).

http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story/hepatitis-c-tricks-liver-cells-sabotage-immune-defenses