Lacy-Hulbert Lab

The immune system provides us with many layers of defense against infection by bacteria, viruses, and other microbes. These range from highly specialized ‘adaptive’ immune responses, which include antibodies to killer T cells that recognize specific microbial components through ‘innate’ immune mechanisms that are designed to react to macromolecules shared by many microbes, to barrier mechanisms, which physically prevent infection in the skin, lung, gut, and other mucosal surfaces.

The Lacy-Hulbert lab works to understand how these different aspects of the immune system cooperate to identify and combat potentially infectious organisms while preventing immune attack against innocuous microbes or the body’s own self.

Work in the laboratory has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, Wellcome Trust, Lupus Research Alliance, Heidner Foundatrion and the Seattle Foundation.