The Yale School of Medicine https://medicine.yale.edu is launching the Center for Infection & Immunity since during COVID and other disease outbreaks, it was realized that there was a need and a greater understanding of underlying pathogenesis for infectious diseases.
The new Center will study infections and immunity in a longitudinal manner to gather insights from changes over time in host response and symptoms. The Center will selectively target distinct phonotypes within given diseases to understand immune pathogenesis.
There is the need to use Machine Learning (ML) tools to uncover causes and mechanisms of conditions that can include post-infection acute and chronic diseases, autoimmunity, and aging related diseases.
According to Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular & Development Biology, “The Center will catalyze collaborations and partnerships between people from diverse backgrounds to learn more about how various infections cause distinct disease outcomes, and how we might prevent, diagnose, and treat these diseases better.”
The center will have an ambitious goal to produce better diagnoses, treatments, and ultimately cures for diseases. The Center will also work towards vaccine development, based on pioneering work showing that vaccines directed towards the mucosa might provide better protection than systemic vaccination.
There are plans to:
- Form a collaborative network of investigators who are already working together at Yale
- Recruit a diverse group of junior scientists from within and outside of Yale
- Establish biorepositories for longitudinal patient samples
- Use other advanced resources and tools in immunology such as virology, microbiology, genetics, and computation
- Integrate clinical interventional and epidemiological approaches
Professor Iwasaki is looking forward to the participation of scientists who are underrepresented in research and academia and also plans to involve patients as equal partners in the Center’s quest to understand infectious diseases.