The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Jason Cyster, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco

Speaker bio(s)

During an immune response B cells must encounter antigen, form conjugates with helper T cells and interact with specialized accessory cells before they can differentiate into plasma cells and memory cells. Remarkably, each of these events occurs in separate regions of the lymphoid tissue. B cells must migrate from niche to niche in a rapid and highly regulated manner to successfully mount a response. Chemokines play essential roles in guiding naive and activated B cell movement. Recently Dr. Cyster and his colleagues demonstrated that 7a,25-dihydroxycholesterol (7a,25-OHC) functions as a B cell guidance factor. The enzymes required for 7a,25-OHC synthesis are expressed in lymphoid tissues and are needed for mounting antibody responses. Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), acting via S1PR1, promotes lymphocyte and plasma cell egress from tissues. The Cyster lab recently found that the G12-G13 coupled S1PR2 receptor acts to promote niche confinement of germinal center B cells by inhibiting migration, and growth regulation through antagonism of Akt. Deficiency in S1PR2 is associated with the development of diffuse large B cell lymphoma.

Dr. Cyster received a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1992. From 1992 to 1995, he was a Cancer Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University Medical Center. He joined the faculty of the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco in 1995 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2000, and to full professor in 2004. He was appointed vice chair of the department in 2010. Since 2005 he has been director of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at UCSF. In 2000 he was appointed an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Cyster was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellow. He received the Cheryl Whitlock Memorial Prize for Postdoctoral Studies in 1997 and the AAI BD Biosciences Investigator Award in 2005.

Open to

Public

Host

Daniel Mucida

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Robert Houghtaling

Phone

(212) 327-8072

Sponsor

Robert Houghtaling
(212) 327-8072
rhoughtali@rockefeller.edu