Marion Pepper

1. #CDC posted new #flu data today. A 🧵
Another pediatric death was reported in the 2024-25 flu season, making it the deadliest flu season for kids since CDC started collecting this data point 20 years ago. 2024-25 has surpassed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
9 kids have died from flu so far this year.

Proud to share our work now out in Cell. We hope what we learned about IgA immune responses to rotavirus can be translated into better vaccines. Congratulations Dr. Kei Haniuda, an amazing PDF. TY
@uoftmedicine.bsky.social
for covering.

temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/news

We're hiring for tenure-track faculty! Please apply if you have interests in immune responses to microbes and/or cancer, immune regulation, microbial infections (bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi), the microbiota, and/or interests that span these disciplines.

arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

“Thousands of very competitive projects in areas like cancer, diabetes, aging, neurological disorders and public health improvements most like went unfunded in 2025.
Similarly, at the National Science Foundation, the roughly 3,000 fewer new grants encompassed reductions to every area of science”

A bad thing is unfolding at NIH this week: It looks like the Trump administration is trying to replace key civil servant scientific leaders, the Institute Directors, with political hires. These directors control the NIH budget, tens of billions.

A bit of a video explainer here: 1/ 🧪

Karel Svoboda and Jay Shendure elected to National Academy of Medicine The honor recognizes leaders who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and made lasting contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health

Congratulations to Karel Svoboda and @jshendure.bsky.social on their election to the National Academy of Medicine (@nam.edu)! Election to the Academy is one of the highest honors in health and medicine. #NAMmtg

More on their journeys to this achievement: alleninstitute.org/news/karel-s...

Super excited about first Shendure/Baker Lab collaboration & preprint on a multiplex sequencing-based strategy for screening de novo proteome editors in mammalian cells. Kudos to the brilliant Chase Suiter (not here) & @greenahn.bsky.social on the work! Preprint here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nobel Prize given for showing the importance of investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth. Basically the opposite of what the US is doing. 😭

It is such a fun collaboration. Thank you @heeg.io and Kathleen Abadie!

Our findings argue that modulating TCF1+ Trm will be important for either suppressing chronic inflammatory diseases or boosting long-lived immune protection. Huge thanks to the many people who contributing to this beast and the NIH-funding that supported it.

TCF1+ cells in the tissue and highlight the TLS core as an important inhibitory niche otherwise absent in the lung tissue. Additional data from our lab and others supports that these two CD4+ Trm populations exist in multiple tissues in multiple diseases and inflammatory conditions.

we could see differences in core signatures at the center of the TLS compared to the outer ring of the TLS, with inhibitory receptor-ligand pairs (PD1/PDL1/PDL2) predominantly expressed in the core. Experiments using PD1 blockade highlight the significant role of PD1 signaling in maintaining...

Citeseq data acquired with the ImmGenT consortium (@immgen.bsky.social) and spatial transcriptomics acquired with the @alleninstitute.org, which allowed for the visualization of transcriptional programs expressed by CD4+ Trm across distance from the TLS to the airways. Even cooler...

a TCF1+ population that resides in tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) and serves as a memory progenitor population for pathological Th2 effectors that reside at the airway interface. Through a collaborative tour de force, we integrated....

What Derek Bangs PhD and colleagues found reveals important insights for treating diseases of chronic inflammation in the tissues. Allergen-specific CD4+ Trm were comprised of two functionally and geographically distinct populations:

Tertiary lymphoid structures support the development of allergen-specific progenitor CD4+ T cells Tissue-resident memory CD4+ T cells (TRM) are key sentinels of the adaptive immune response that provide a rapid, robust inflammatory response upon reactivation in non-lymphoid tissues. While CD4+ TRM...

Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by acute, intermittent, recurrent episodes of airway inflammation. A decade of work developing the tools, techniques and collaborations needed to figure out how CD4+ T cells in the lungs propagate disease can be found here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

More coming on what this means but this was one of those stories that took almost a decade to come together but was well worth the time. Also check out a companion piece on @biorxiv by Patrick Brennan!

This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥

We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪

Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...

Is COVID-19 Associated With an Increased Risk of Subsequent Upper Respiratory Tract Infections in Adults? A Prospective Cohort Study AbstractBackground. In Autumn 2022, a surge in upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) was observed worldwide. Individuals anecdotally reported increase

Neat study—following 320 healthcare workers for almost a year, with 152 of them being infected, the authors examined whether or not COVID-19 associates with more upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs). It didn't (yay!).

But, having a kid <5 associated with a 74% increase in the risk of URTIs.

Excited to be here! Have to admit John Denver was running through my head as we wound our way through the country roads of West Virginia.

Dropping hepatitis B shots for newborns would ignore history and endanger children, scientists warn People who study, treat, or have hepatitis B say ending routine vaccination at birth - as some vaccine critics want - could lead to a resurgence of the virus.

If you read 1 thing today, please make it this: my so-talented colleague @ericboodman.bsky.social explains why babies in the US are vaccinated at birth against hep B — and what the human costs of changing that policy would be. www.statnews.com/2025/09/11/n...

Trump Wants Proof That Covid Vaccines Work. It’s Easy to Find.

In a post on Truth Social, the president suggested that the CDC was being “ripped apart” over a question that was answered long ago — whether Covid vaccines work.
(Gift article)

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/h...

Yesterday the president demanded that evidence about Covid vaccines be shown to the public. Today @apoorvanyt.bsky.social & I run through some of the studies made public over the past 4+ years that show that the vaccines work. Gift link: nyti.ms/46k17Tq

Enormous thanks to @immunologyking.bsky.social and @maurogaya.bsky.social for organizing a vibrant, invigorating #EMBObarriertissues workshop. A poignant reminder of how critical
immunological studies are for ameliorating human disease. And a lot of fun people. 🐟 #wickelfisch

💔 he did this for so many of us.

Michael Cancro (1949–2025) Just a few weeks ago, researchers and educators connected to immunology lost a wonderful friend and colleague: Michael Cancro, professor of pathology and lab medicine at the University of Pennsylvania...

I only heard tonight that Mike is no longer with us. All credit to him in setting me on this path as an immunologist. The description of his teaching brings back such warm memories. I recognize so many of the scientists on his
collage. What a gift to the world he was.

www.cell.com/immunity/ful...

Early, adjuvant-responsive epigenetic programs in B cells imprint subsequent plasma cell survival and the duration of humoral immunity The duration of antibody production varies across different infections and vaccines. To define molecular programs that promote durable humoral immunity, we used mice deficient in ZBTB20, a transcripti...

We mostly rely on Bayesian guesswork to predict how long antibodies will be produced for new vaccines/infections. Here, we find that some of the key programs are set *really* early. We hope early signatures can be used to predict and engineer durable vaccine immunity. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The ousting of Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC Director, followed within hours by the resignations of Dr. Deb Houry, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, mark a collapse of public health leadership with consequences that reach every American household.

Applications are now open! We are recruiting 20 Assistant Professors in a wide range of subject areas. We're looking for early-career researchers with strong scientific merits and future potential.
🔗 All positions: ki.se/en/about-ki/...

With deep gratitude, we thank Dr. Marc Jenkins for his decades of leadership, mentorship, and dedication to the Center for Immunology. The foundation he built will guide and inspire us for years to come.