ICIS members Dr Ruth A Franklin and Dr Zhenyu Zhong received the AAI ASPIRE Award at this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Association of Immunologist (AAI2024), held in Chicago from May 3rd to 7th, where they also had the opportunity to present their research via podium presentations.
The AAI ASPIRE Award recognizes up to six outstanding early career investigators for research accomplishments and professional promise in the field of immunology. The objective of this award is to encourage and motivate the development of talented early career AAI member scientists to continue advancing their research activities and scientific contributions in the field of immunology.
Dr. Franklin started her lab in 2020 and her group is interested in understanding the fundamental biological principles at the intersection of immunology and regenerative biology. To do so, her lab studies the role of immune cells in tissue building and rebuilding in the context of injury, infection, and cancer. They main objective is to identify the molecular mechanisms by which immune cells contribute to tissue remodeling and repair and to decipher how dysregulation of these pathways drives development of disease. Hence, using an interdisciplinary approach, our studies aim to elucidate the communication circuits between innate immune cells, mainly macrophages with non-immune cells and sensory neurons at mucosal barrier sites. Thus, they focus on identifying additional homeostatic functions of macrophages and determine how these features may be dysregulated or exploited during inflammatory diseases such as fibrosis and cancer. In addition, another aim of Franklin Lab is to uncover novel mechanisms by which immune cells contribute to disease tolerance.
Zhong Lab started in 2018 and his group studies inflammation, mitochondrial stress responses, tumor immunology, and obesity-associated liver disorders. On the one hand, he is interested in understanding how mitochondria sense the perturbation of immune homeostasis and how they respond to such events. To do so, his research focuses on the characterization of the molecular mechanisms involved in the role mitochondria play in immune signaling, in the context of autoinflammatory diseases. On the other hand, another goal of his lab is to uncover and reveal the fundamental molecular mechanisms by which chronic liver inflammation is established in the liver under obesity, and to explore if such novel mechanistic insights could be applied to benefit liver repair and regeneration processes after injury. Moreover, his lab also seeks to develop strategies that modulate host innate immune system in order to induce strong innate immune activation in the tumor microenvironment to ultimately turn a “cold” tumor into a “hot” one. He believes that such cancer innate immune therapy would help overcome resistance to some immune checkpoint blockade strategies.
Dr Franklin and Dr Zhong also won the 2023 ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Award for Excellence in Cytokine & Interferon Research, and the 2020 ICIS-Milstein Young Investigator Award, respectively.
Congratulations to both of you and we hope you continue doing outstanding advances in immunology and, of course, in cytokines and interferons research field!