Wagar Lab (University of California, Irvine)
The Wagar Lab at UC Irvine investigates the initiation, regulation, and resolution of human immune responses to infectious diseases and vaccines, with a focus on lymphoid and mucosal tissues. Their mission is to accelerate vaccine and immunotherapy design by understanding and manipulating the specialized immune microenvironments in human tissues. Using innovative immune organoid models, the lab aims to improve translational vaccine studies, enable novel mechanistic experiments, and explore genetic and environmental contributions to immune variation, particularly in the context of respiratory infections.
Wagar Lab (University of California, Irvine)
Wagar lab Falling Leaves Building, rm 2131 847 Health Sciences Quad Irvine CA 92697 United States
What We Do
A novel model composed of primary human lymphoid and mucosal tissues, enabling translational vaccine studies, mechanistic experiments with human samples, and investigation of inter-individual immune variation.
Projects focused on predicting host and antigen factors contributing to immunogenicity using human immune organoids.
Research on the influence of immune aging and adjuvant effects on vaccine protection and durability.
Elucidating the effects of immune therapeutics in normal and tumor organoids, including checkpoint blockade therapies.
Understanding differences in adaptive immunity and immune repertoires between tissues and the periphery.
Developing and testing new vaccine designs to protect against pathogens lacking effective vaccines.
Application Area
Key People
Assistant Professor, Principal Investigator
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bioinformatics Programmer
Postdoctoral Scholar
Postdoctoral Scholar
Postdoctoral Fellow
News & Updates
Suhas Sureshchandra and Patricia Román-Carrasco received the AAI Trainee Abstract Award for oral presentations at the AAI conference.
Erika, Evien, and Haven received CALIT2 x UROP funding for their interdisciplinary team project.
Mahina Mitul and Erika Joloya received T32 fellowship support through the Institute for Immunology.
Mahina Mitul won the Excellent in Research Award from the Physiology & Biophysics department for her work on sex differences in human tissue immunity.
Mahina Mitul and Zach Wagoner were awarded for their contributions to the UCI annual immunology symposium.
A study identifying host-specific correlates of protection to different influenza vaccines using human immune organoids.