Team

The Community

The initiative consists of a team of Immunologists from the Icahn School of Medicine (Mount Sinai, NY, USA) and the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and the Viral Immunology Unit (University of Oxford, GB). Together, we are exploring new approaches to academic peer reviewing.

Coordinators

Felix Richter is a PhD student in the Simon lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford.

He is co-founder of the OxMS Journal Club Initiative.

Nicolas Vabret is an Assistant Professor of Immunology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

He is co-founder of the OxMS Journal Club Initiative.

Ester Gea-Mallorquì is a postdoctoral fellow in the Rowland-Jones lab at the Viral Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. She is interested in the interplay between viruses and the immune system, especial in viral immune evasion.

She is also Head of Communications of the OxMS Journal Club Initiative.

Ashley Reid is a PhD student in the Bhardwaj Lab at Mount Sinai. She studies the interaction between epigenetic therapy-induced transposable element expression and immunotherapy in cancer.

Isabela Pedroza-Pacheco is a postdoctoral fellow in the Borrow/McMichael lab in the Viral Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms underpinning the immune-regulatory environment that modulates germinal centre responses.

Yavuz Yazicioglu is a PhD student in the Clarke lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on how cellular metabolism shapes immune responses in B cells.

Ewoud Compeer is a postdoctoral fellow in the Dustin lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Oxford. He uses state-of-the-art microscopy to study immune cell remodelling supporting immune cell-cell communication, ultimately driving immunotherapy and vaccine development.

Julie M. Mazet is a PhD student in the Gerard Lab at the Kennedy Institute, Oxford. Her research focuses on defining the dynamic relationship between IFN-g and CD8+ T cell dysfunction in cancer.

Reviewers

Dorothée Berthold is a PhD student in the Udalova lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on deciphering the role of innate immune cells at the onset of colitis.

Matthew Brown is a graduate student in the Bhardwaj lab at Mount Sinai.

His primary research interest is the use of precision medicine in translational research to enhance drug and vaccine development.

Rebecca Jeffery is a PhD student in the Powrie lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on understanding the role of the microbiome in the development of intestinal inflammation.

Michelle Tran is an MD/PhD student in the Bhardwaj lab at Mount Sinai. She is interested in uncovering biomarkers and mechanisms of resistance to bladder cancer immunotherapies.

John Hamp is a postdoctoral fellow in the Jostins lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. His research is on both immunological and transcriptomic responses to cellular activation in T Cells focusing on chronic inflammatory diseases.

Miriam Saffern is a PhD student in the Samstein lab, part of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai. She uses both computational and experimental approaches to study cancer risk and immune surveillance.

Aljawharah Alrubayyi is a PhD student in the Rowland-Jones/Peppa lab in the Viral Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on interplay between viruses and the immune system, with a particular interest in innate immune responses to chronic viral infections.

Matthew Lin is a MD/PhD student in the Brody lab at Mount Sinai. He studies the function of T cell immunotherapy in clearing antigen-escape tumors and is

interested in combining genomic engineering with immunotherapy.

Ghada Alsaleh is a postdoctoral fellow in the Simon lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Oxford. She is studying the age-related decline of autophagy in memory T and B cells to uncover novel drug targets that may increase vaccination efficiency in the ageing context.

Verena van der Heide is a postdoctoral fellow in the Homann and Kamphorst labs at Mount Sinai. Her research interests focus on the induction, regulation and modulation of CD8 T cell responses in acute/chronic viral infections and autoimmune disease

Barbora Schonfeldova is a PhD student in the Udalova lab at the University of Oxford. She studies synovial macrophages in the context of inflammatory arthritis.

Natalie Vaninov is a PhD student in the Samstein lab. Her work integrates both computational and experimental approaches to study the role of tumor-intrinsic differences on the myeloid compartment and how this drives response to cancer immunotherapies.

Wanlin He is a PhD student in the McMichael lab in the Viral Immunology Unit, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on exploring the trafficking pathway of MHC-E and how MHC-E presents pathogen-derived peptides to CD8+ T cells.

Samarth Hegde is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Miriam Merad at Mount Sinai. He is interested in understanding myeloid regulation across tissue types and in response to distal tumor cues.

Lauren Chang is a PhD student in the Schotsaert lab at Mount Sinai. She is interested in understanding the role of eosinophils and other granulocytes in the context of respiratory viral infections such as influenza.

Matthew Park is a MD/PhD student in the Merad lab at Mount Sinai. He is involved in the profiling of the immunological changes associated with tissue-specific remodeling during physiological aging and tumorigenesis using novel fate-mapping models and high throughput sequencing.

Jenna Newman is a postdoctoral fellow in the Bhardwaj lab at Mount Sinai. Her primary field of study is neoantigen-reactive CD8+ T cells in the tumor microenvironment.

External Partners

Institutional Partner: Mount Sinai

The Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (PrIISM) is an entity that encompasses and integrates immunological research programs and technology centers. PrIISM is working to better understand the fundamental mechanisms used by immune cells to promote disease progression and response to treatment, developing and implementing novel technologies to better diagnose and guide treatment of disease, and generating new therapies to modulate the immune system in a broad spectrum of diseases, including cancer, inflammatory, cardiovascular, and neurological diseases.

Our mission would not not be achievable without reliable partners that support the initiative and are crucial to the success of the cross-institutional immunology preprint journal club.

Institutional Partner: Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology

The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (KIR) has more than 25 research groups working in the areas of immunity and microbiome, inflammation biology and tissue remodelling and regeneration. Our studies provide insight into the biological processes that cause pathways to malfunction in disease, and our research teams have joined coordinated efforts to understand the host response to COVID-19.

Communications Partner: Nature Reviews Immunology

Nature Reviews Immunology is a monthly review journal, staffed by a team of full-time professional editors, that provides in-depth coverage of all areas of immunology, from fundamental mechanisms to applied aspects. In addition to our review articles, we highlight recent developments and exciting new primary papers in the field, as well as reflecting on the people, papers and events that have influenced the development of immunology. We publish regular ‘Preprint Watch’ Journal Club pieces in collaboration with the OxMS Preprint Journal Club to provide our readers with a short summary of early data of potential interest.