Wagar Lab (University of California, Irvine)

Research on sex differences in immune cell composition and function across tissues and ages.

Development of a human lymphoma organoid model for studying and targeting the tumor immune microenvironment.

Review on the use of human immune organoids to inform rational vaccine design.

Overview of human immune organoids as a tool for studying vaccine responses.

Study showing how influenza vaccine format affects cellular and antibody responses in human immune organoids.

Commentary on immune microenvironments.

Describes the use of tonsil organoids to model human adaptive immune responses.

Study on progenitor identification and SARS-CoV-2 infection in human distal lung organoids.

Presents a multi-omic single-cell atlas of human B cell identity.

Describes a deep learning approach to predicting HLA class II antigen presentation.

Compares T cell differentiation and function in Bangladeshi and American children.

Study on how environmental factors and infectious disease shape infant B cell receptor repertoires.

Describes a method for live cell barcoding in mass cytometry.

Review of advanced model systems and tools for human immunology.

Study on phenotypic mapping of human dendritic cells.

Research on the role of 4-1BB signals in tissue-resident memory CD8 T-cell populations.

Study on identifying specificity groups in the T cell receptor repertoire.

Research on antigen presentation profiling in lymphoma.

Study on T memory cell differentiation after Varicella Zoster vaccination in older individuals.

Study on immunity to H1N1 influenza post-pandemic.

Research on influenza-specific T cells in older people and vaccine response.

Celebration of Mahina Mitul's successful PhD defense and her contributions to the lab.

Sam Kim and Mariam Mohagheghi officially joined the lab for their graduate studies in Spring.

Erika, Evien, and Haven completed their CALIT2 project and presented at the annual CALIT2 symposium.

Suhas and Patricia received the AAI Trainee Abstract Award for oral presentations at the AAI conference in Honolulu. Mahina also received an Abstract Award and presented posters.

Zach and Tim, with the team, identified novel correlates of neutralizing antibody responses to flu vaccine, validating predictors from organoids in vivo.

Erika, Evien, and Haven received CALIT2 x UROP funding for their team project, awarded to undergraduate interdisciplinary research teams led by a graduate student.

Mahina and Erika received T32 fellowship support; Mahina and Zach were awarded for contributions to the UCI annual immunology symposium.

Dr. Katrina Evans joined the lab to work on novel vaccine formulations and mechanistic studies in immune organoids.

Mahina Mitul published her first, first-author paper on sex differences in human tissue immunity in Frontiers in Immunology and won the Excellent in Research Award.

Jenna Kastenschmidt and Joe Schroers-Martin published a paper on creating primary human follicular lymphomas and testing immunotherapies in vitro, in collaboration with the Alizadeh lab.

Postdoc Jenna Kastenschmidt moved to Basel, Switzerland for a Senior Scientist position at Roche.