Using these markers in Ugandan children, Jason showed that Tr1 cells play a dual role: helping mediate clinical immunity to malaria while also potentially facilitating parasite persistence through mechanisms of immune regulation.
We found that the same T-cell clones could persist in blood for hundreds of days and re-expand when a child got malaria again. Although we’ve long known immune memory exists, this was one of the first times it’s been shown so clearly in humans.
Publications Alert- Malaria remains one of our oldest and most persistent adversaries — responsible for over 600,000 deaths annually, the vast majority in young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite remarkable progress, we still don't fully understand how the immune system learns how to protect
against this parasite, or why that protection is so hard to achieve and sustain. That's what drives the work in our lab, and today I'm thrilled to celebrate two publications from our team - and the investigators who led those studies.
We also found that the malaria response was dominated by type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells. These cells expanded with each malaria infection and kept their unique identity over time. Our findings shed light on malaria immunity, and how immune memory works more broadly. Congrats Jason!
Kassie and Jason — It has been an absolute privilege to work alongside you on this work!
Excited to share the amazing PhD dissertation work of Jason Nideffer, who was mentored by Maria Grazia Roncarolo and myself. By following Ugandan children over time, Jason was able to track individual T-cell clones during and after malaria infections.
🎉 Congratulations to Kassie D. Press on her paper just published in PLOS Pathogens! Kassie used cutting-edge human tonsil and spleen organoids to model how malaria parasites shape immune responses in secondary lymphoid organs. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
Kassie found that exposure to P. falciparum dramatically expands cytotoxic Vδ2⁺ γδ T cells, which clonally expand with activated, granzyme-expressing phenotypes. This opens new windows into lymphoid tissue immunity, and vaccine "hyporesponsiveness," in malaria-endemic settings.
🎉 Congratulations to Jason Nideffer on his paper published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation! Jason's work defines a novel surface marker profile — CXCR6⁺ CD127⁻ — that identifies Type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells in the context of P. falciparum infection. www.jci.org/articles/vie...
