Translating immunological insights from the bench to the clinic requires a robust network of collaborators who understand both settings. With roots in UW Medicine—the only system in the five-state WWAMI region to integrate clinical, research, and teaching missions—the ITI Clinical & Human Studies hub connects researchers to clinicians for studies on autoimmunity, vaccine efficacy, and much more. This hub capitalizes on partnerships between laboratory scientists and clinicians that were forged during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people across UW came together to characterize human responses first to viral infection, and later to the COVID-19 vaccines. With extensive expertise in epidemiology, medicine, and human subject research, this hub is ideal for translational investigations in human immunology. Collaborative projects here include:
- Immune profiling of COVID-19: the hub possesses samples and paired clinical data from a longitudinal prospective cohort of COVID-19 survivors and uninfected controls, both pre- and post-vaccination. These offer a unique opportunity to conduct a multitude of projects exploring the durability and evolution of long-term immune memory; evaluating immune responses to infection and vaccination; and identifying biomarkers to inform the development of more vaccines and therapeutic strategies.
- Respiratory viral transmission dynamics and correlates of protection against flu, RSV, and other respiratory viruses: hub investigators have banked samples from maternal influenza vaccine trials in South Asia and community surveillance studies in the United States. These cohorts can be leveraged to understand genomic diversity and spread in diverse populations; correlates of protection against respiratory viruses; and dynamics of immunity over time (e.g., pre- and post-pandemic)
