Congratulations Zach and Tim on the new publication! With their combined efforts, plus lots of help from the whole team, we identifed several novel cell correlates of neutralizing antibody responses to flu vaccine. It was really cool to see that new predictors Zach and Tim identified from the organoid model could be validated using in Read More…

The Wagar lab cleaned up this quarter! Mahina and Erika both received T32 fellowship support, and Mahina and Zach were both awarded for their excellent contributions to the UCI annual immunology symposium.

Wow, it has been a busy summer. New postdoc Dr. Katrina Evans joined the lab to work on novel vaccine formulations and understanding how and why they work via mechanistic work in immune organoids. Congratulations to PhD students Mahina Mitul and Erika Joloya who successfully competed for T32 funding through the Institute for Immunology and Read More…

Congratulations to PhD student Mahina Mitul on publishing her very first, first-author paper! Mahina has done some excellent work to elucidate sex differences in human tissue immunity. Check out her paper, published in Frontiers in Immunology, here. Mahina also won the Excellent in Research Award from the Physiology & Biophysics department for her work. We are Read More…

‍Another exciting paper was published from the lab this month. Check it out in Cell Stem Cell. Co-first authors Jenna Kastenschmidt and Joe Schroers-Martin were able to create primary human follicular lymphomas and test immunotherapies in vitro. This was a great collaboration with the Alizadeh lab and we look forward to many more collaborations in the Read More…

We are wishing postdoc Jenna Kastenschmidt the very best as she moves to Basel, Switzerland for a Senior Scientist position at Roche. Way to go, we will miss you!

The very first paper from the Wagar lab was published in Immunity on July 20th! Time to celebrate! Check out the amazing paper from first-author Jenna Kastenschmidt (and several Wagar lab co-authors) here. Based on this work, Jenna established a new working model of how vaccine format influences the magnitude and quality of the influenza responses.

Congratulations to Kyle for completing his Bachelors degree in Computer Science! We’re also celebrating the kickoff of the Wagar lab’s first R01 grant, which will focus on identifying host factors that affect the immune response to flu.

Welcome to Erika Joloya, who is officially joining us for her graduate studies after a successful spring rotation!

Congratulations to Zach for winning second prize for his poster at UCI’s Institute for Immunology annual symposium!