Nagamoto-Combs lab brings home awards from American Association of Immunologists conference
Dr. Kumi Nagamoto-Combs, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, and members of her research team attended IMMUNOLOGY 2024 earlier this month. At the international conference hosted by the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) in Chicago from May 3-7, a graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher from the Nagamoto-Combs lab presented their studies that received award recognitions.
A postdoc in Nagamoto-Combs’s lab, Geetika Verma, Ph.D., received the AAI Trainee Abstract Award for her abstract, entitled “Continuous allergen consumption sustains neuroinflammation independent of allergen-specific IgE levels in mice with subclinical food allergy.” Dr. Verma also gave an oral presentation at a symposium. And first-year graduate student Angela Mullins was also honored with the AAI Trainee Poster Award for her project, “Continuous food allergen consumption accelerates the development of β-amyloid pathology in AppNL-G-F mice in a sex-dependent manner.”
Summarizing the work upon which both posters were based, Nagamoto-Combs explained how individuals could be hypersensitized to food allergens without experiencing “typical” allergic reactions such as hives, swelling, and respiratory distress.
“These individuals are recognized as ‘asymptomatically sensitized’ or ‘tolerant’ to food allergens and may not necessarily need to avoid them since they do not have life-threatening or other severe reactions,” said Nagamoto-Combs. “However, our previous studies have demonstrated that mice sensitized to a cow’s milk allergen are not so ‘asymptomatic.’ When these mice ingest the offending allergen, they show behavioral changes with signs of neuroinflammation and neuropathology.”
Verma’s work is supported by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant. Likewise, Mullins’s work was supported by an NIH R21 grant.
