Preprint Club
- A cross-institutional Journal Club Initiative -
The Community
The initiative consists of a team of immunologists from a number of participating institutions including:
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Icahn School of Medicine (Mount Sinai, NY, USA)
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Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and the the Viral Immunology Unit (University of Oxford, GB)
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Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) & Center for Molecular Medicine (CIM) (Karolinska Institute, Sweden)
Together, we are exploring new approaches to academic peer reviewing.
Coordinators
Felix Richter is a postdoctoral fellow in the Simon lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford.
He is co-founder of the Preprint Club Initiative.
Nicolas Vabret is an Assistant Professor of Immunology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
He is co-founder of the Preprint 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 Preprint 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.
Nicolas Ruffin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. His research aims at exploring the mechanisms of lymphocyte activation at the root of Multiple Sclerosis.
Laura Palma Medina is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Infectious Medicine at the Karolinska Institute. Her research focuses on understanding the host-pathogen interactions leading to the rapid development of necrotizing soft tissue infections.
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.
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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.
Tim O'Donnell is a bioinformatician in the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai. His work focuses on T cell epitope prediction for cancer vaccines.
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.
Alice Chen-Liaw is an MD/PhD student in the Faith lab at Mount Sinai. She is interested in quantifying bacterial strain diversity in the human gut microbiome and investigating the colitogenicity of microbiome function over time.
Elena Brenna is a postdoctoral fellow in the McMichael lab at the Viral Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. Her research aims to investigate the role of different cellular components in germinal centres during immune responses.
India Brough is a PhD student at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on understanding how intestinal microbiota can drive inflammatory arthritis.
Stephanie Longet is a postdoctoral fellow in immunology specialised in infectious diseases and vaccines at the University of Oxford. Her research is focused on antibody responses induced by Ebola virus, Lassa virus and SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Luisanna Pia is a PhD student in Brian Brown's lab at Mount Sinai. She applies CRISPR genomics to understand the spatial architecture of the tumor microenvironment.
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Rahul Ravindran is a PhD student at the University of Oxford and training in clinical gastroenterology. His research focuses on inflammatory bowel disease and particularly how the lymphatic system may aid the resolution of intestinal inflammation.
Zerina Kurtovic is a PhD student in the Svensson lab at the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. Her research focus are macrophages in the dorsal root ganglia and their importance in chronic pain conditions.
Eveline Van Gompel is a PhD student in Lundberg lab at Karolinska Institutet and in the Tissue Homeostasis and Disease lab at KU Leuven. Her research focusses on the role of autoantibodies and antigen-specific B cells in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies.
Bethany Charlton is a PhD student in the Rowland-Jones lab at the Centre for Immuno-Oncology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the interplay between viruses and the immune system, especially regarding the antigenic processing pathway in viral infections.
Mezida Saeed is a postdoctoral fellow at the Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology department at Karolinska Institutet. Her research focusses on the role of the actin cytoskeleton in the regulation of immune cell functions in the context of pathophysiologies due to inborn errors in actin regulators.
Max Quastel is a PhD student in the Gillespie/McMichael lab at the Centre for Immuno-Oncology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on HLA-E peptide complexes in relation to HIV, TB, and cancer, and developing therapeutics based on this platform.
Matilde Oviedo Querejazu is a project assistant at Centre for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Her primary research field is both in neurobiology and immunology.
Lisha Jeena is a PhD student in the Rowland-Jones lab in the Cancer Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the effect of chronic inflammation on musculoskeletal health in adolescents with HIV compared to those without HIV.
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Vivian Lau is a PhD student in the Gerard lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on cytokine crosstalk between tumour cells and immune cells within the tumour microenvironment.
Abishek Vaidya is a PhD student in Alice Kamphorst's lab at Mount Sinai. He studies the differentiation of PD-1+ CD8 T cells into functional effector-like cells, including the helper role of CD4 T cells in the context of cancer and chronic infections.
Yonina Bykov is a PhD student in the Garcia-Sastre lab at Mount Sinai. She is studying a novel oncolytic virus and is interested in targeted design of oncolytic virotherapy approaches to overcome resistance
Oksana Goroshchuk is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurology at Yale University and is affiliated to the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. Her research explores the effect of sex hormones on T lymphocytes and sex bias in multiple sclerosis.
Prerna Suri is a PhD student in the Samstein Lab at Mount Sinai. Herresearch focusses on understanding the influence of DNA DamageRepair genes on the immune landscape of tumors.
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 Preprint Club to provide our readers with a short summary of early data of potential interest.
Institutional Partner: Karolinska Institutet
The Karolinska Institute (KI) is a research-lead medical university located in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, the researchers engaged in the preprint journal club belong to several departments at KI but most work at the Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) located in Solna and the Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) in Huddinge. Our research focuses on advancing our understanding of immune responses in health and diseases, performing experimental and clinical research for the benefit of the patients.
Mariana Borsa is a postdoctoral fellow in the Simon Lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on understanding the role of organelle segregation in T cell fate determination.