Dr. Ranit Kedmi

As living creatures, we are constantly exposed to our surroundings. While our immune system elicits an inflammatory response to get rid of infections, it has evolved to allow mutualistic relations with our gut microbes and to tolerate food antigens. To execute these distinct immune responses, CD4 T cells acquire alternative fates. But which cells inform them what should they become? In the lab, we combine traditional immunology, mouse genetics, sequencing-based approaches, and protein engineering, to identify the cellular networks, required to elicit distinct immune responses. We have a special interest to understand the underlying mechanism of tolerance initiation and its breakage, and we anticipate that our work will provide the groundwork for developing new therapeutic modalities for autoimmune disorders, allergies, and inflammatory bowel disease.