Autoimmune Life Blog

Eddie James, PhD, earned a new grant to explore early cell changes that lead to T1D, using a new tool pioneered at BRI.

For nearly 20 years, Dr. Buckner has been working to find a more targeted approach with fewer side effects. And she’s among a handful of scientists pursuing an intriguing idea: Can we use gene editing to change cells that cause disease into cells that protect you from disease?

Bill Kwok, PhD, has made groundbreaking discoveries and built a tool that’s fueled countless advances. But he makes his work and his path to BRI sound simple: Why study the minute details of the immune system? Well, he’s curious — he was always at the library as a kid.

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

In the past few years, Elisa Boden, MD, has seen more and more patients with celiac disease. The disease strikes when the immune system mistakes gluten—a mixture of proteins found in wheat and other grains—as an enemy and attacks the small intestine.

Principal Investigator Karen Cerosaletti, PhD, and colleagues have applied single-cell science to better understand type 1 diabetes with some surprising and significant findings.

Pioneering research on peanut allergies at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) was recently fueled by a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate discovery of treatments.

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.

Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) is relatively small compared to large research universities, but its impact goes well beyond its size and location, accelerating scientific discovery globally.