Autoimmune Life Blog

BRI scientists were sure of one thing when the novel coronavirus struck: They had the expertise to make swift progress toward understanding it and finding better treatments. “Studying how the immune system responds to viruses has been part of our work for years,” says BRI’s President Jane Buckner

It might seem unlikely for scientists at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI), a research institute focused on causes and cures for autoimmune disease, to study cancer. Scientists like Dr.

BRI researchers Emma Kuan, PhD, and Steven Ziegler, PhD, have pinpointed how the protein, called thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), causes breast cancer tumors to survive and grow.

Did you know that BRI researchers aren’t just researchers? They’re teachers, too. In fact, 12 BRI researchers serve on the University of Washington (UW) faculty, two of which also teach at the Chiba University School of Medicine in Japan.

At first glance, allergies and multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes may seem more different than similar.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded BRI an $8 million grant to lead the center—a collaboration of researchers from BRI, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

Scientists at Benaroya Research Institute recently discovered a critical pathway in peanut allergy that may extend to other food allergies.

How do you study children and adults who suffer from asthma, allergies or respiratory diseases? Without direct access to the lung for experiments, researchers find it challenging to study the molecules and cells that cause these conditions.

This research update is on a variety of studies that BRI is conducting or collaborating on with other institutions. They are tackling various scientific and immunologic questions that explore innovative ways to fight MS from the lab to clinical studies.

“You can’t lay tracks until you know where the train is going,” says BRI Director Gerald Nepom, MD, PhD. “In immunology research, that translates into discovering what the immune system cells are doing and identifying their different roles.