James Lab
The goal of the James lab is to learn how human B cells differentiate into long-lived antibody-secreting plasma cells. We would like to better understand how dysregulated B cell differentiation can contribute to plasma cell-associated immune diseases, including primary immune deficiency, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. We leverage what we learn to develop B cell-based therapies.
Funding for the James Lab is provided by the Brotman Baty Institute, the National Human Genome Research Insititute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle Children's, the National Institute of Allery and Infectious Disease and the National Cancer Institute.
Latest News
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Partnership Opportunities
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Greg Asher
Research Scientist II
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Teresa Bonilla Zuñiga
Research Scientist I
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Nathan Camp
Research Scientist IV
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Rene Cheng
Research Scientist III
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Shruti Gupta
Fellow PhD
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Anna Helmers
Research Scientist I
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Cade Ito
Graduate Student, UW Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease
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Ameena Romani
Research Scientist I
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Nikita Trivedi
Research Scientist III
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Tingting Zhang
Research Scientist IV
Collaborators
David Rawlings is the director of the Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies at Seattle Children’s. The Rawlings lab uses a variety of techniques to study basic and clinical immunology, signal transduction, and lymphoid development. The ultimate goals of the collaboration between the James’ and Rawlings’ labs are to (1) use murine models to better understand the impact of disease variants on lymphoid development and (2) to develop a B cell-based therapy for protein delivery.
The James lab works with the Buckner and Cerosaletti labs (1, 2, 3) in our efforts to better understand how coding variants associated with autoimmune disease (Type 1 diabetes and lupus) impact protein function, cellular signaling and developmental outcome.
Adrian Piliponsky's lab studies inflammatory processes involving mast cells including allergic inflammation, inflammation during sepsis and inflammation caused by bacterial infections. We have worked with the Piliponsky lab (5) to identify chymase cleavage sites in the clotting factor, F13A and to characterize their relevance to bleeding times during sepsis. Our ongoing collaboration focuses on (1) the role of Dock8 in primary immune dysregulation and (2) identification of novel mast cell surface proteins.
Ajay Gopal is the director of clinical research, hematology malignancies/hematology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. The Gopal lab is focused on identifying and testing novel therapeutics for lymphoma. Our work with the Gopal lab is focused on identifying resistance mechanisms for B cell targeted therapies in lymphoma; including resistance to ibrutinib, venetoclax, idelalisib and others.
Jason Debley's lab uses epidemiological, clinical and molecular methods to determine the causes of morbidity in pediatric asthma. We have worked with the Debley lab (4) to determine the proteins secreted by bronchial epithelium isolated from asthmatic versus that isolated from healthy control children. Our goal is to identify novel factors secreted by healthy epithelia that restrain fibrosis that could potentially limit lung function defects in asthma.