Sculpting Innate Immunity
As the body’s first line of defence, the innate immune system has enormous therapeutic potential, sensing and initiating responses to infection, injury, metabolic stress, and chronic inflammation. Modulating innate immunity with precision and control could unlock a new paradigm in human health.
What is an opportunity space?
Opportunity spaces are areas of research that we believe are ripe for breakthroughs. They are defined by our Programme Directors, and must be highly consequential for society, under-explored relative to its potential impact, and ripe for new talent, perspectives, or resources to change what’s possible.
Core beliefs
The core beliefs that underpin this opportunity space:
The immune system is responsible for either maintaining health or mediating pathology for nearly all known human disease → effectively harnessing the immune system is essential if we wish to transform human health.
The innate and adaptive immune systems are equal pillars of immunity but so far, we’ve largely only reaped the benefits of modulating the adaptive immune system → the innate immune system is the next frontier for unlocking the full benefits of immune modulation.
Optimal modulation of the innate immune system will require 'sculpting' with both precision and accuracy → new tools from synthetic biology, drug delivery, and in vitro immune models, combined with new insights from innate immunology, large-scale biological data, and AI, can create a new therapeutic paradigm across the spectrum of disease.
Observations
Some signposts as to why we see this area as important, underserved, and ripe.
Give feedback on this opportunity space
Help inform the development of the programme thesis.
Meet the programme team
Our Programme Directors are supported by a Programme Specialist (P-Spec) and Technical Specialist (T-Spec); this is the nucleus of each programme team. P-Specs co-ordinate and oversee the project management of their respective programmes, whilst T-Specs provide highly specialised and targeted technical expertise to support programmatic rigour.
Brian Wang
Programme Director
Brian co-founded the non-profit Panoplia Laboratories to pre-develop medicine for the next pandemic. Brian has a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, conducted postdoctorate research in synthetic biology at MIT, and was Head of R&D at vaccine development start-up Alvea.
Andrea Szydlo-Shein
Programme Specialist
Andrea holds a PhD in neuroscience and neurobiology, with postdoctoral work in immunology and industry experience in all three fields. She has expertise in small molecules and RNA therapeutics and has served in a range of roles, from lab research to scientific project management. Andrea supports ARIA as an operating partner from Pace.
Our other opportunity spaces
Our opportunity spaces are designed as an open invitation for researchers from across disciplines and institutions to learn with us and contribute – a variety of perspectives are just what we need to change what’s possible.