Dr. John Wherry is the Director of the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses how T cell exhaustion develops during chronic infections and cancer, and why it may serve as a protective adaptation rather than simply a dysfunctional immune state. He also explores how epigenetic regulation shapes exhausted T cell differentiation, the potential of emerging gene-editing and delivery technologies to manipulate T cell function, and the opportunities and limitations of artificial intelligence in advancing immunology research.

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IRF4 Regulates Treg Cell Identity – Researchers have identified an IRF4 regulatory element that drives inflammatory reprogramming and loss of suppressive function in human regulatory T cells, revealing a potential target for improving Treg therapies.

γδ T Cells Require TCR Signaling – Tissue-resident γδ T cells depend on T cell receptor signaling for their rapid, innate-like responses to tissue stress and cancer, revealing a key mechanism of immune surveillance.

Bacterial LPS Trains Lung Immunity – Low-dose Pseudomonas aeruginosa LPS enhances lung-resident NK cell activity through C3aR1 signaling, providing microbiota-dependent protection against bacterial pneumonia in mice.

BATF+ Tregs Mark Early Lung Cancer – BATF-expressing regulatory T cells expand across blood and lung tissues during early lung cancer development, providing potential targets for monitoring and preventing disease progression.

Image courtesy of Dr. John Wherry

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Dr. Merav Cohen is a Principal Investigator at Tel Aviv University. She discusses how her lab uses single-cell technologies to decode communication between immune cells and their surrounding tissues. She explores how physical interactions can reprogram macrophages and neutrophils, how these cells communicate with tumor cells, and how cellular crosstalk can promote angiogenesis, tumor growth, and cancer progression.

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Mapping T Cells in Diabetes – Multimodal profiling reveals distinct inflammatory and differentiation states of CD8+ T cells across pancreatic lymph nodes and pancreatic tissue in Type 1 diabetes.

Balancing the Inflammatory Response – IRF2 restrains inflammation by limiting IRF1-driven immune gene expression, revealing a transcriptional switch that regulates innate immune responses.

Interferon Reshapes Stem Cell Fate – Interferon-α reshapes hematopoietic stem cell differentiation in myeloproliferative neoplasms, while disease-causing mutations alter how stem cells respond to treatment.

The Gut–Brain Immune Connection – Gut infections send activated CD4+ T cells to the brain’s borders, where they establish long-lived immune memory against intestinal microbes.

Image courtesy of Dr. Merav Cohen

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Dr. Roger Geiger is a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland, and leads a research group at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. He discusses how his lab studies the metabolic regulation of T cell function and explores engineering bacteria to deliver therapeutic payloads directly to tumors. He also explains how arginine metabolism can enhance anti-tumor T cell responses and how naïve T cells remain metabolically prepared to rapidly respond to immune challenges.

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C. difficile Shapes Gut Development– Early-life C. difficile exposure alters intestinal stem cell behavior and leaves lasting changes in gut development.

The Serotonin–Asthma Connection– ILC2-derived serotonin amplifies airway inflammation and activates sensory neurons to promote asthma and cough hypersensitivity.

IgA Fuels Liver Inflammation – IgA binding to liver myeloid cells is associated with IL-1-linked inflammation and liver injury in alcohol-associated liver disease.

Serotonin Drives Severe COVID-19 – Platelet-derived serotonin promotes blood clotting and lung dysfunction during SARS-CoV-2 infection, helping explain greater disease severity with age.

Image courtesy of Dr. Roger Geiger

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