Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation (DAIT)

Modeling Immunity for Biodenfense

On this page:

• Program Overview
• Contract Awardees and Project-generated Resources
• Summer School and Symposium
• Recent Publications

Program Overview

The NIAID contract program Modeling Immunity for Biodefense (MIB) brings together immunologists, microbiologists, bioinformaticians, and modelers to develop mathematical models of immunity to infection or vaccination. Resources developed by the program are freely available to the research community.

The contract also supports an annual summer school and symposium to introduce immunologists to modeling techniques and to explain how modeling can enhance immunological research.

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Contract Awardees and Project-generated Resources

In 2010, the MIB program awarded four contracts. The organizations and principal investigators include the following:

• Center for Computational Immunology at Duke University—Thomas Kepler, Ph.D.
• Program for Research on Immune Modeling and Experimentation (PRiME) at Mount Sinai School of Medicine—Stuart Sealfon, M.D.
• Research Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens (MIEP) at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Polytechnical Institute—Josep Bassaganya-Riera, D.V.M., Ph.D.
• University of Rochester Center for Biodefense Immune Modeling—Hulin Wu, Ph.D., and Martin Zand, M.D., Ph.D. 

Each website provides free access to research data, protocols, and computational modeling and data analysis tools. These resources will also be made available through the NIAID-supported ImmPort.

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Summer School and Symposium

The topic of the 2013 summer school and symposium is quantitative systems immunology and will be held from June 10 to 15, 2013, at the Center for Computational Immunology, Boston University. Visit the summer school and symposium websites for more information and how to register. Registrations are due by April 15.

The summer school is intended for experimental immunologists who desire an introduction to mathematical/computational modeling techniques and their applications to problems in immunology. Computational biology graduate students at the earliest stages of their studies are also welcome. No computational modeling experience is required. A limited number of scholarships are available each year to cover travel and lodging expenses for summer school attendees.

The symposium brings together an international group of speakers to discuss recent developments in computational modeling related to topics that include immune system function, immunity to infections, and viral dynamics/pathogenesis.

Recent MIB Publications

Miao H, Hollenbaugh JA, Zand MS, Holden-Wiltse J, Mosmann TR, Perelson AS, Wu H, Topham DJ. Quantifying the early immune response and adaptive immune response kinetics in mice infected with influenza A virus. J Virol. 84(13):6687-98 (2010).

Sen D, Forrest L, Kepler TB, Parker I, Cahalan MD. Selective and site-specific mobilization of dermal dendritic cells and Langerhans cells by Th1- and Th2-polarizing adjuvants. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 107(18):8334-9 (2010).

Nudelman G, Ge Y, Hu J, Kumar M, Seto J, Duke JL, Kleinstein SH, Hayot F, Sealfon SC, Wetmur JG. Coregulation mapping basedon individual phenotypic variation in response to virus infection. Immunome Res. 6:2 (2010).  

Zaslavsky E, Hershberg U, Seto J, Pham AM, Marquez S, Duke JL, Wetmur JG, Tenoever BR, Sealfon SC, Kleinstein SH. Antiviral response dictated by choreographed cascade of transcription factors. J Immunol. 184(6):2098-17(2010).

Mitha F, Lucas TA, Feng F, Kepler TB, Chan C. The Multiscale Systems Immunology project: software for cell-based immunological simulation. Source Code Biol Med. 3:6 (2008).

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