Danielle Minichino presented an oral defense of her thesis work on ERK signaling in dendritic cells and its control of the translatome. She did an outstanding job and the culmination of years of work in the lab has now concluded with her receipt of a PhD! We all are super proud of her, and are looking forward to seeing her work in publication so we can she her results with the world. We wish her the best of luck on her new adventures in her future career.
Congratulations to Danielle Minichino who has had her abstract selected as a Nominee for the Nezelof Award during the Presidential Symposium session during the upcoming Histiocyte Society Meeting on October 12th. Danielle has been doing some really exciting work examining the effect of BRAF mutations on translational dynamics within dendritic cells. We think this might lead to some novel ideas on the pathogenesis and treatment of Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis and are looking forward to Danielle presenting these ideas at the meeting.
The American College of Rheumatology annual scientific meeting (“ACR Convergence”, don’t look at me, I didn’t make that name up) is happening November 3-10, 2021. The meeting brings together the best Rheumatology related science across the globe. Unfortunately, given our current state of affairs, the meeting will be virtual this year. However, I am sure it will be as stimulating and exciting as always!
The Behrens Lab is featured a number of times for this upcoming meeting. Most excitingly, our work on SARS-CoV-2 and the Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MISC) is being featured as a Plenary Session presentation! Ed Behrens will be delivering the presentation on his work characterizing the plasma proteome in different pediatric SARS-CoV-2 presentations, and its implication for the pathogenesis of MISC. The talk is currently slated for Plenary Session II, Sunday November 7, 2021 from 11:45-12:00 Eastern time.
Our work is also being featured in a talk being given by Randy Cron, who will be discussing a role for DOCK8 in cytokine storm syndromes. We have collaborated with Dr. Cron on this project, and provided some interesting mouse data to support some of the observations his team has made on human samples. This talk with be given in the Pediatric Rheumatology – Basic Science session on Tuesday November 9, 2021 from 3:45 – 4:00 pm Eastern time.
When the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic took hold, a lot of scientists had to shut down their labs, or at least significantly slow down their pace of research. Our lab was no exception. On the other hand, our Immune Dysregulation team at CHOP sprung into action to try to understand the immune mechanisms of disease in children infected with the virus. This work has produced a number of publications, on which many I have had the privilege to be co-senior author. We are continuing to generate and analyze an enormous amount of data from this work, and have a number of manuscripts under review at the moment as well. That link should update with new papers as they hit Pubmed, so check back to see the most recent work our group has published. Hopefully, through science, we will beat this virus and come out the other end with even more knowledge about how pathogens result in immune dysregulation and disease that will help us in the future. In the meantime, get vaccinated, use appropriate personal protective equipment, and wash your hands.
We’ve entered the 21st century! Stay tuned for news and other thoughts.