Eun-Hyung Lee, MD is an associate professor in pulmonary, allergy, critical care, and sleep medicine and the Lowance Center for Human Immunology in the department of medicine at Emory University and the director of the emory asthma, allergy, immunology program. Frances is also a member of the Emory Vaccine Center and Center for Childhood Infections and Vaccines (CCIV) at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Her research focus is to understand the biology of human protective and pathogenic plasma cells in health and disease in blood, bone marrow (BM) and respiratory tissues. Her laboratory has identified a unique phenotype of human long-lived plasma cells (LLPC) in the BM and the special survival factors within the BM microniche where LLPC reside. Using the different qualities of the human plasmablasts/antibody secreting cells (ASC) in the blood, respiratory tissues and bone marrow, she is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of LLPC maturation and maintenance. She also pioneered using a novel matrix from circulating ASC in the blood called MENSA (media enriched with newly synthesized antibodies) to diagnose acute viral, bacterial and fungal infections.

Frances completed her undergraduate and medical school education at the Johns Hopkins University. She trained in internal medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), served as chief medical resident, and then completed her pulmonary & critical care medicine fellowship at Boston University and URMC. She stayed on as faculty at URMC until she eventually moved to Emory University in 2012. Frances is an NIH study section member and ad hoc reviewer for various grant programs and journals. She also co-leads a project from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop human B cell therapies.

Dr. Shiv Pillai is a professor of medicine and health sciences & technology (HST) at Harvard Medical School. He is the program director of the NIH-funded Autoimmune Center of Excellence at Massachusetts General Hospital and the director of the Harvard immunology Ph.D. and master’s in medical sciences programs. Shiv is also director of MD-student research for the Harvard-MIT HST program. He is a group leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; a member of the MGH Cancer Center; and an associate member of the Broad Institute.

Shiv is a world leader in the study of fundamental B-cell immunology. His laboratory at MGH postulated and provided evidence for the first ligand-independent signaling model during lymphocyte development, now a widely accepted mechanism for both pre-B receptor and pre-T receptor signaling. Shiv’s laboratory also showed that Btk, the product of the gene mutated in X-linked agammaglobulinemia, is functionally linked to the pre-B receptor and the B-cell receptor. Btk inhibitors are now widely used in lymphoid malignancies and autoimmunity. In addition, his group defined a functional niche for B cells (around sinusoids in the bone marrow); identified the first two mutants that abrogate marginal-zone B-lymphocyte development; developed the concept of a follicular versus marginal zone B-lymphoid cell-fate decision; and discovered two new defined stages of peripheral B-cell development, the marginal zone precursor (MZP) B cell and the follicular type II B cell.

In addition, Shiv’s work has contributed to breakthroughs in understanding the pathogenic mechanisms underlying an autoimmune fibrotic disorder, IgG4-related disease, with ongoing investigations involving the study of systemic sclerosis and common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). These findings have generated several clinical trials targeting the activated lymphocytes responsible for chronic inflammation and fibrosis in patients with these autoimmune disorders.

Shiv is the author of a monograph “Lymphocyte Development” and co-author with Abul Abbas and Andrew Lichtman of two widely used textbooks of immunology. He is the course director of immunology courses at Harvard Medical School and Harvard College and for the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. Shiv received a medical degree from Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, and a doctorate in biochemistry from Calcutta University. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training in the lab of David Baltimore at MIT.

Dr. Richard James is an associate professor in pediatrics and pharmacology at the University of Washington and a principal investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Richard’s research is focused on understanding how genetic variants lead to dysregulated signaling in lymphoma and in immune dysregulation. He is the co-leader of the B cell engineering program at Seattle Children’s.

Plasma cells are dedicated protein producing machines. The James lab is interested in understanding which proteins are responsible for differentiation of B cells into plasma cells including: activation of naive B cells, response to T cell help, plasmablast expansion and antibody production on a per cell basis. The James lab recently developed genome engineering techniques that can be used to edit primary human B cells, which can subsequently differentiate into plasma cells ex vivo. In collaboration with other projects, Richard uses genome engineering to ask whether oncogenic variants associated with lymphoma or those associated with lupus alter B cell development. Richard is also developing new ways to express and secrete human proteins in plasma cells, with the eventual goal of developing engineered plasma cells as immunotherapies for diseases caused by defects in secreted proteins (e.g. hemophilia).

Dr. Cyster is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor and vice-chair in the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. He graduated from the University of Western Australia with a B.S. honors degree in biochemistry and microbiology and completed a Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Oxford in the laboratory of Alan Williams. He was a postdoctoral fellow in immunology at Stanford University with Christopher Goodnow and he joined the faculty at UCSF in 1995.

Jason is internationally recognized for defining how lymphoid microenvironments are organized to support adaptive immunity. His lab played a key role in the discovery of lymphoid tissue chemokines and established the concept that chemokines continuously guide cells to supportive niches.

Jason’s group led the way in defining how cells exit from lymphoid organs, a process essential for immune function. His team established the egress-promoting role of sphingosine-1-phosphate and identified the mechanism of action of key egress regulators. He has been a leader in applying two-photon microscopy to unraveling antigen-encounter and immune cell migration dynamics. He received the 2005 AAI BD Biosciences Investigator Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in immunology and the 2018 AAI Biolegend Herzenberg Award for outstanding contributions in B cell biology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.