The Immunology Podcast

Dr. Dan Littman is a Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He discusses how his lab investigates the molecular mechanisms that regulate T cell development and differentiation, including the role of RORγt in shaping immune cell identity and function. He also explores the discovery of unconventional antigen-presenting cells involved in immune tolerance, how the gut microbiome influences T cell responses and cancer immunotherapy, and the potential of emerging technologies to uncover the complex interactions between microbes and the immune system.

Sugar Disrupts the Microbiome – High sugar intake during antibiotic treatment worsens gut microbiome disruption and promotes Enterococcus expansion.

Diet Shapes Immunotherapy Toxicity – Diet and gut microbiota influence immunotherapy side effects, revealing potential ways to reduce inflammation.

Tregs Support Intestinal Recovery – Intestinal epithelial NF-κB signaling recruits regulatory T cells to promote inflammation resolution and tissue repair.

PPARδ Boosts Anti-Tumor Immunity – Activating PPARδ enhances T cell metabolism and anti-tumor activity, improving immunotherapy responses in preclinical models.

Image courtesy of Dr. Dan Littman

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Dr. John Wherry is the Director of the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses how T cell exhaustion develops during chronic infections and cancer, and why it may serve as a protective adaptation rather than simply a dysfunctional immune state. He also explores how epigenetic regulation shapes exhausted T cell differentiation, the potential of emerging gene-editing and delivery technologies to manipulate T cell function, and the opportunities and limitations of artificial intelligence in advancing immunology research.

IRF4 Regulates Treg Cell Identity – Researchers have identified an IRF4 regulatory element that drives inflammatory reprogramming and loss of suppressive function in human regulatory T cells, revealing a potential target for improving Treg therapies.

γδ T Cells Require TCR Signaling – Tissue-resident γδ T cells depend on T cell receptor signaling for their rapid, innate-like responses to tissue stress and cancer, revealing a key mechanism of immune surveillance.

Bacterial LPS Trains Lung Immunity – Low-dose Pseudomonas aeruginosa LPS enhances lung-resident NK cell activity through C3aR1 signaling, providing microbiota-dependent protection against bacterial pneumonia in mice.

BATF+ Tregs Mark Early Lung Cancer – BATF-expressing regulatory T cells expand across blood and lung tissues during early lung cancer development, providing potential targets for monitoring and preventing disease progression.

Image courtesy of Dr. John Wherry

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Dr. Merav Cohen is a Principal Investigator at Tel Aviv University. She discusses how her lab uses single-cell technologies to decode communication between immune cells and their surrounding tissues. She explores how physical interactions can reprogram macrophages and neutrophils, how these cells communicate with tumor cells, and how cellular crosstalk can promote angiogenesis, tumor growth, and cancer progression.

Mapping T Cells in Diabetes – Multimodal profiling reveals distinct inflammatory and differentiation states of CD8+ T cells across pancreatic lymph nodes and pancreatic tissue in Type 1 diabetes.

Balancing the Inflammatory Response – IRF2 restrains inflammation by limiting IRF1-driven immune gene expression, revealing a transcriptional switch that regulates innate immune responses.

Interferon Reshapes Stem Cell Fate – Interferon-α reshapes hematopoietic stem cell differentiation in myeloproliferative neoplasms, while disease-causing mutations alter how stem cells respond to treatment.

The Gut–Brain Immune Connection – Gut infections send activated CD4+ T cells to the brain’s borders, where they establish long-lived immune memory against intestinal microbes.

Image courtesy of Dr. Merav Cohen

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Dr. Roger Geiger is a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland, and leads a research group at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. He discusses how his lab studies the metabolic regulation of T cell function and explores engineering bacteria to deliver therapeutic payloads directly to tumors. He also explains how arginine metabolism can enhance anti-tumor T cell responses and how naïve T cells remain metabolically prepared to rapidly respond to immune challenges.

C. difficile Shapes Gut Development– Early-life C. difficile exposure alters intestinal stem cell behavior and leaves lasting changes in gut development.

The Serotonin–Asthma Connection– ILC2-derived serotonin amplifies airway inflammation and activates sensory neurons to promote asthma and cough hypersensitivity.

IgA Fuels Liver Inflammation – IgA binding to liver myeloid cells is associated with IL-1-linked inflammation and liver injury in alcohol-associated liver disease.

Serotonin Drives Severe COVID-19 – Platelet-derived serotonin promotes blood clotting and lung dysfunction during SARS-CoV-2 infection, helping explain greater disease severity with age.

Image courtesy of Dr. Roger Geiger

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Dr. Martin Prlic is a Professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. He discusses the challenges of studying human immunology and how his lab uses advanced single-cell technologies to understand T cell responses across healthy, inflamed, and tumor tissues. He also explores the biology of tissue-resident T cells, how inflammation shapes their function, and immune cell interactions at the maternal-fetal interface.

lncRNA Regulates Gut Immunity – An IBD-associated long noncoding RNA promotes immune tolerance by enhancing regulatory T cell function and limiting inflammatory T cell responses.

Trust in Research Antibodies – An investigation identified nearly 19,000 apparently manipulated antibody validation images across products sold by 15 research antibody vendors.

Targeting Melanoma with mRNA – A Phase III trial found that a personalized mRNA neoantigen therapy combined with KEYTRUDA improved recurrence-free and distant metastasis-free survival compared with KEYTRUDA alone after melanoma surgery.

Beyond Shingles Prevention – A recombinant shingles vaccine was associated with a lower long-term risk of several cardiovascular outcomes, supporting further studies of its potential cardioprotective effects.

Engineering Myeloid Immunotherapy – Expandable granulocyte-monocyte progenitors provide a scalable platform for engineering macrophages that can target blood and solid tumors.

CAR T Cells Meet Glioblastoma – Responses to CAR T cell therapy for glioblastoma are associated with the surrounding immune environment, with NK cells linked to response and regulatory T cells and suppressive myeloid cells linked to resistance.

Image courtesy of Dr. Martin Prlic

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Dr. Miriam Merad is Director of the Precision Immunology Institute and a Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She discusses how myeloid progenitors and macrophages shape the tumor microenvironment, and how dendritic cells support tertiary lymphoid structures and anti-tumor immunity. She also explores the role of chronic inflammation in aging and disease, and shares her perspective on the importance of biomedical research in protecting human health.

Viral Reactivation in COVID-19 – Chronic viruses frequently reactivate during severe COVID-19, with distinct patterns associated with inflammation, disease severity, recovery, and long COVID.

Safer Antibodies During Pregnancy – Fusing therapeutic antibodies to albumin reduces their transfer across the placenta while preserving prolonged circulation, offering a strategy to limit fetal drug exposure during pregnancy.

Self-Sustaining Regulatory T Cells – Engineering regulatory T cells with a self-sustaining IL-2 signaling system improves their persistence and ability to prevent autoimmune diabetes in mice.

Where Tuberculosis Persists – Mycobacterium tuberculosis persists in lymph nodes by forming infected monocyte-derived niches that evade recognition by Mtb-specific T cells despite activating antimicrobial responses.

Image courtesy of Dr. Miriam Merad.

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Dr. Pere Santamaria is a Professor at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary and Group Leader at the Barcelona Institute. He discusses how his lab studies the mechanisms underlying autoimmune diseases, with a focus on regulatory T cell biology and antigen-specific immune tolerance. He also explains how his team developed a nanomedicine platform that reprograms autoreactive T cells into regulatory cells, offering a targeted approach to treating autoimmune disorders without suppressing normal immune function, and shares the challenges of translating this technology from the lab to the clinic.

Maternal Vaccine Against GBS – A Phase I/II trial shows that a maternal hexavalent Group B Streptococcus vaccine is safe and elicits robust antibody responses in both mothers and infants.

Decoding Treg Differentiation – TCR specificity and antigen presentation context determine regulatory T cell differentiation and phenotype, providing a framework for antigen-specific immune tolerance.

A Microbiota–Autoimmunity Axis – Disrupted dendritic cell development promotes gut dysbiosis that drives inflammatory dendritic cell expansion and systemic autoimmunity.

Programming Regulatory T Cells – Arginine availability regulates MHC class I antigen presentation, influencing antiviral immunity and cancer development.

Image courtesy of Dr. Pere Santamaria.

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Dr. Brian Brown is a Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He discusses how his lab develops innovative technologies to study the immune system and advance new therapeutics, from T cell engineering to mRNA-based medicines. He also explores how microRNA-guided targeting can improve the precision of mRNA therapeutics, how different tissues shape immune responses, and the importance of effective science communication.

Sindbis in Cerebrospinal Fluid – Scientists have found evidence that Sindbis virus can invade the human central nervous system and cause neurological disease.

A Skin–Lung Reflex – Activation of sensory neurons in the skin suppresses allergic airway inflammation through a vagus nerve–mediated neuroimmune reflex.

Microbiome Enhances Cancer Immunity – Gut bacteria promote anti-tumor immunity by converting tryptophan into indoles that enhance immune responses and inhibit melanoma growth.

Macrophages Drive Healthy Aging – Restoring macrophage clearance of senescent neutrophils reverses age-related decline across multiple organs in mice by blocking EP2 signaling.

Image courtesy of Dr. Brian Brown

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Dr. Andrew Hogan is a Professor and Principal Investigator of the Obesity Immunology Research Group at Maynooth University. He discusses how obesity drives chronic inflammation and immune dysfunction, increasing the risk of diseases such as diabetes and cancer, while highlighting the immune system’s role in disease progression. He also explains how GLP-1 therapies improve both metabolism and immune function, offering new insights into obesity treatment.

Innate Immunity Predicts Symptoms – Stronger innate immune responses predisposed people to influenza symptoms while also promoting antiviral immune activation.

Broad HIV Neutralization #1 – A novel HIV immunogen induced broadly neutralizing antibodies in macaques, providing a promising blueprint for HIV vaccine development.

Broad HIV Neutralization #2 – A germline-targeting vaccine induced broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies in nonhuman primates.

CAR-T Targets Glioblastoma – A dual-targeting CAR-T therapy achieved durable glioblastoma control in preclinical models.

Image courtesy of Dr. Andrew Hogan

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Dr. Marco Orecchioni is an Assistant Professor at Augusta University. He discusses how olfactory receptors — best known for detecting smells — also function in innate immune cells such as macrophages, where they help sense chemical cues in the tissue environment. He highlights how these receptors regulate inflammation, metabolism, and immune cell behavior in diseases such as atherosclerosis, and explores their potential as novel therapeutic targets.

Origins of Tumor Macrophages – Tumor-associated myeloid cells arise from distinct circulating monocyte clones with pre-programmed differentiation fates.

DDX6 Restrains Tumor Immunity – DDX6 suppresses dsRNA-driven innate immunity by limiting RNA editing.

Antibody-Directed Xenophagy – TRIM21 directs antibody-bound pathogens into a newly identified autophagy pathway that promotes intracellular pathogen clearance.

RNA Warfare in Plant Immunity – A fungal long non-coding RNA suppresses rice immunity by sequestering a host microRNA.

Image courtesy of Dr. Marco Orecchioni.

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