Wagar Lab
Principal Investigator: Lisa Wagar
Institution: University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA)
Primary Subfield: Immunology
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Influenza virus infections cause significant global morbidity and mortality and pose a serious pandemic risk due to the virus’s propensity for reassortment and mutation. Current influenza vaccines elicit strain-specific responses and are only 10-60% effective depending on the year. There is an urgent need for a universal influenza vaccine that elicits robust, persistent, and broadly cross-reactive B and T cell responses. Designing such a vaccine will require a comprehensive understanding of how features from both the host and the antigen modulate the magnitude, quality, and breadth of the influenza-specific response. Most human influenza studies have been limited to peripheral blood sampling, even though the critical cellular decisions that lead to productive adaptive immune responses occur within lymphoid tissues. Our long-term goal is to define the dynamics of the lymphoid tissue microenvironment, including cell-cell interactions and signaling pathways, that elicit protective immune responses in humans. Our central hypothesis is that immune signatures from mucosal lymphoid tissue are significantly more informative than peripheral blood in developing immun…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01AI173023-04: Investigating protective adaptive immune responses to influenza antigens using human tonsil organoids (2026)
- 5R01AI173023-03: Investigating protective adaptive immune responses to influenza antigens using human tonsil organoids (2025)
- 5R01AI173023-02: Investigating protective adaptive immune responses to influenza antigens using human tonsil organoids (2024)
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