NIH VideoCasting

Immunology Interest Group

Dr. Russell Vance is Professor of Immunology & Pathogenesis at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 2000, and then conducted postdoctoral research on host-pathogen interactions in the laboratories of John Mekalanos and Bill Dietrich at Harvard Medical School, where he developed a focus on the genetics of host resistance to Legionella pneumophila. Continuing this work in his own lab at Berkeley, he has made major contributions to our understanding of the molecular basis by which pathogens are detected by the innate immune system. His lab discovered and characterized the cytosolic sensing of bacterial flagellin through the NAIP/NLRC4 inflammasome (Ren et al (2006) PLoS Pathogens, 2:e18; Kofoed and Vance (2011) Nature, 477:592) and more recently the cytosolic immunosurveillance pathway that detects unique signaling molecules called cyclic-di-nucleotides (Burdette et al (2011) Nature, 478:515; Diner et al (2013) Cell Reports 3:1355). This latter work has made a critical contribution to understanding the innate response to cytosolic DNA. His lab also studies additional innate immune signaling pathways that are activated by pathogen-induced disruption of normal host processes. Russell is an excellent speaker and this promises to be an engaging seminar on the latest advances in host-microbe immunosurveillance mechanisms.