SPEAKERS
of the webinar series
Professor Rachel Golub stands at the forefront of immunological research as the leader of the “Development of Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC) and Inflammation” research group at the Institut Pasteur. With a career dedicated to unraveling the complexities of the immune system, her pioneering work has advanced our understanding of hematopoiesis. Her contributions to the field began with her insightful characterization of the fetal compartment of hematopoietic stem cells and the mechanisms of hematopoiesis within the fetal spleen. These early discoveries laid the foundation for her subsequent research endeavors, which have increasingly focused on the biology of ILCs. Prof. Golub’s research has been instrumental in underlining the pivotal functions of the Notch signaling pathway in the differentiation of clonal ILC precursors during both fetal and adult life. This work not only deepens our comprehension of the developmental pathways of immune cells but also highlights the plasticity and adaptability of the immune system in response to environmental cues. At the heart of Prof. Golub’s scientific inquiry is her dedication to exploring how inflammation influences the development, fate, and functionality of ILCs. Her team’s current projects are exploring the critical roles that ILC populations play in a range of pathologies, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
Kenji Kabashima graduated from Kyoto University in 1996. He trained in Medicine and Dermatology at the United States Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan, Kyoto University Hospital, and the University of Washington Medical Center in the USA. His research on bioactive lipid mediators at Kyoto University culminated in a PhD under the supervision of Professor Shuh Narumiya. He furthered his studies in the Department of Dermatology at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine (under Professor Yoshiki Miyachi), UCSF (under Professor Jason Cyster), and the University of Occupational and Environmental Health (under Professor Yoshiki Tokura).
Currently, he is a chair and professor at the Department of Dermatology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan. Additionally, he is a principal investigator at SRIS/A*STAR in Singapore and a visiting consultant at the National Skin Centre in Singapore. His primary research interests include the mechanisms of inflammatory skin diseases (such as atopic dermatitis, contact dermatitis, and psoriasis) in both mice and humans and the 3D visualization of the skin using two-photon microscopy.
His hobbies include marathons (his personal best is 2:54:38), trail running (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc 170 km), golf, climbing, and traveling.
Tomohiro Kurosaki received his M.D. in 1980 from Okayama University Medical School and his Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry from Kyoto University in 1987. Soon he joined Dr. Jeffrey Ravetch’s Laboratory as his first Japanese postdoctoral fellow at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. In 1992, he moved to Lederle Laboratories and worked until 1996 as an independent research scientist, while holding the position of adjunct assistant professor in Yale University in the United States. After returning to Japan, he directed his own laboratory and taught at the Institute for Liver Research at Kansai Medical University. He joined RIKEN in 2001 and has been a group director of his own research group. In 2008, he also joined Osaka University and became a specially appointed professor in WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center. Since then, he has been running two laboratories. In April 2024, RIKEN became his primary affiliation again, while maintaining his laboratory in Osaka University as a visiting professor. His major contribution to the field is dissecting BCR signaling and elucidating memory B cell function.
After receiving his PhD in Immunology at Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML) on the functional characterization of the human T cell clones, Bernard Malissen spent two years as a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and then became a team leader at CIML. He pioneered in the eighties the use of gene transfer approaches to dissect the function of molecules involved in T cell function (MHC, TCR and coreceptors).
He also elucidated the atomic structure of several TCR in complex with peptide- MHC ligand, providing explanation for TCR cross-reactivity and alloreactivity. In the late eighties, the possibility to edit the mouse genome “à la carte” led him to develop innovative mouse models allowing to tackle the function of T cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells in their in vivo physiological context. To make sense of the formidable complexity of the signal transduction networks involved in T cell activation, his teams at CIML and Center for Immunophenomics (CIPHE) combine mouse functional genomics and high-throughput “omic” approaches to further the understanding of T cell function under normal and pathological conditions.
Dr. Kazuyo Moro graduated from Nihon University School of Dentistry in 2003 and obtained her Ph.D. in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Keio University School of Medicine in 2010. In 2012, she joined RIKEN as a senior researcher and later became the team leader for the Laboratory for Innate Immune Systems in 2015. Additionally, she serves as a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University since 2019.
Her research focuses on group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s), a discovery she made in 2010. Her research extends to the cytokine regulation and development of ILC2s, exploring their roles in allergic diseases, fibrosis, endometriosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and the aging process. Her overarching goal is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of ILC2-related diseases and their impact on human health.
Dr. E. Piaggio obtained the diploma of clinical biologist and the PhD in Immunology at the National University of Rosario, Argentine. She did her post-doctoral studies in France and is research director of INSERM. She directs the “Translational Immunotherapy team” at Institut Curie, in Paris. Her team is part of the first French Center for Cancer Immunotherapy. Her main contributions have been in the field of regulatory T-cell based immunotherapy of infectious diseases (Chagas’ disease), autoimmunity (type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis/EAE), alloreactivity (GVHD and transplantation) and more recently, cancer; including Ab-based and Il-2-based therapies. She is co-founder of Egle-Therapeutics, a biotech developing Treg-based immunotherapies.