Nora Sarvetnick

University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA

Title: New underlying mechanism explaining the viral etiology of autoimmunity
Annette Marleau and Nora Sarvetnick
University of Nebraska Medical center, Omaha NE

Abstract:

Many viral infections cause T cell dysfunction or deficiency, thereby impairing virus-specific T cell responses and promoting pathogen persistence. Using a murine model of coxsackievirus B4 (CB4) infection, a virus that has been epidemiologically linked to type 1 diabetes, we have identified a novel mechanism of virus-induced immune suppression. We show that CB4 infects the thymus and perturbs positive selection by increasing the affinity of thymocytes for their selecting ligands, leading instead to negative selection and thymocyte loss. B7-H1, a negative regulator of peripheral T cell signaling, was identified as a marker of thymocytes that have experienced strong signaling, but averted the virus-mediated negative selection and constituted a major population of thymic emigrants during acute infection. However, our data also revealed that the CB4-infected periphery was itself inhibitory to T cell function and survival. Hence, CB4 infection evokes T cell lymphopenia through two separate mechanisms: reduced thymic T cell output in combination with inhibition of T cell function in the periphery.

Biography:

Nora Sarvetnick, Ph.D. – Professor Sarvetnick graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1978 with a Bachelors Degree in Liberal Arts.  She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1986, from The State University of New York, Stonybrook. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Muscular Dystrophy Association in 1986, and completed her postdoctoral studies in 1990 at Genentech Inc., in San Diego, California, in the laboratory of Dr. T.A. Stewart.  She joined the facility at The Scripps Research Institute in 1990, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuropharmacology.  She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1994, and in 1996 was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure, in the Department of Immunology.  In 2000 she became a full Professor in the Department of Immunology.  She has over 175 peer reviewed publications and has received a number of awards which include, a Career Development Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (1990-1993), a Multidisciplinary Diabetes Program Project Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (1995-2000) and has twice been awarded an American Diabetes Association Mentor-Based Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Award, (1996-2002 and 2005-2009).  Her area of expertise is in Immunology and Type 1 Diabetes. In August of 2008, she relocated to Omaha, NE with her family. Dr. Sarvetnick is the Principal Investigator, Director and Professor of Type 1 Diabetes-Adult Onset laboratory at the Lied Transplant Center, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Omaha, NE.