Once a month, the Dean of Graduate Education at Johns Hopkins organizes a university-wide event to bring together top medical and graduate students across disciplines to discuss ways they can work together to solve an important problem in medicine. On January 22, 2019, this Partnering Toward Discovery event entitled ““Technologies Transforming Human Immunology” was focused on Inclusion Body Myositis, and featured four 10-15 minute talks followed by a question and answer session.
First, Sahana Jayaraman, a second-year medical student in the Johns Hopkins Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), presents a clinical vignette of a patient with Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) whom she saw in the Myositis Center with co-director, Thomas Lloyd, MD, PhD. Next, Kyla Britson, a fourth-year graduate student in the Lloyd lab describes a novel xenograft mouse model she has developed to help study IBM. Third, Ben Larman, Assistant Professor of Pathology, gives an overview of new technologies his lab is developing that are transforming human immunology. Finally, Janelle Montagne, a graduate student in the Larman lab, describes how she has developed and utilized one such novel method to identify T cells that may cause autoimmunity in IBM.
The Lloyd and Larman labs are collaborating with other members of the Myositis Center and experts in Myositis from around the world to use these novel technologies to find the cause and treatment of IBM and other forms of myositis.
