[April 1] The 13th IRCMS Seminar, "Immunogenetic variation that impacts human health and disease: a tricky balancing act"

March 24 2016

We'll hold the 13th IRCMS Seminar as following details. We hope to see many of you at the seminar.

Date:         Friday, April 1, 2016

Time:        15:00-16:00

Venue:     2F Seminar Room, Center for AIDS Research (CAIDS)

Lecturer:  Dr. Mary Carrington, Ph.D.

                Senior Investigator, Cancer and Inflammation Program, Center for Cancer Research,
                National Cancer Institute, NIH

Title:        Immunogenetic variation that impacts human health and disease: a tricky balancing act

Abstract:

     Variation in the HLA class I and II genes has the greatest influence genome-wide on outcome of many diseases, including HIV infection. The benefits of a protective variant against one disease can increase the risk of another.  Allelic effects of the HLA class I and II genes on disease protection/susceptibility have been thoroughly documented over decades, but more recently it has become evident that other polymorphisms within the region also contribute to disease outcome, such as those involved in innate receptor recognition and regulation of cell surface expression levels. I will describe the effects of variation within and near the HLA class I genes on various diseases, concentration on HIV disease. Three examples of opposing effects will be presented: HLA-B*57, which is an allele of the highly polymorphic HLA-B gene that confers protection against HIV-1, but associates with risk of psoriasis and abacavir hypersensitivity; variants determing HLA-C expression levels, where high expression associates with protection against HIV-1, but risk of Crohn's Disease and graft vs. host disease; and Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor gene variation that protects against KSHV infection, but increases risk of Kaposi's sarcoma.