Autoimmune Life Blog

A critical factor in whether people develop an autoimmune disease is “cell communication.”  BRI principal investigator Adam Lacy-Hulbert, PhD, is studying cell communication in the gut.

How do you study children and adults who suffer from asthma, allergies or respiratory diseases? Without direct access to the lung for experiments, researchers find it challenging to study the molecules and cells that cause these conditions.

For most people, the onset of type 1 diabetes (T1D) seems to occur suddenly, often resulting in a trip to the emergency room with life-threatening complications.

Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) and Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) are pioneering the use of gene editing techniques in efforts to control type 1 diabetes (T1D).

A landmark study called LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) demonstrated that regular peanut consumption begun in early infancy and continued until age five reduced the rate of peanut allergy in at-risk infants by 80 percent compared to non-peanut consumers.

In addition to his role as BRI’s Director of the Immunology Research Program for the past 13 years, Steve Ziegler, PhD, assumed the new position of director of Academic Affairs at BRI, as of Jan. 1.

In March of 2015, 13-year-old Lizzie Blockhus experienced a week of being very tired and not feeling well. “I woke up in the middle of night and was dying of thirst,” she explains. “Then I was at my sister’s soccer game, dying of thirst again and I knew something wasn’t right.

This research update is on a variety of studies that BRI is conducting or collaborating on with other institutions. They are tackling various scientific and immunologic questions that explore innovative ways to fight MS from the lab to clinical studies.

“You can’t lay tracks until you know where the train is going,” says BRI Director Gerald Nepom, MD, PhD. “In immunology research, that translates into discovering what the immune system cells are doing and identifying their different roles.

At Benaroya Research Institute, philanthropic investments have been absolutely critical to the success of scientific endeavors, innovative ideas and medical breakthroughs.