Alan Aderem, Ph.D.

Alan Aderem, Ph.D.
Affiliate Professor of Medicine and Immunology
Professor and Associate Director, Institute for Systems Biology.

CONTACT INFORMATION
University of Washington
Health Sciences Building
Mail Stop 357650

Our focus is on the innate immune system: how it recognizes and formulates responses to infectious agents, and how it instructs the adaptive immune system to provide long-lived immunity to the pathogen. Our initial studies defined how pattern recognition receptors, in particular the toll-like receptors, identify bacteria; in essence, how the immune cell reads the molecular bar-code of the microbe and thereby precisely defines the nature of the threat. This precise recognition triggers a specific, highly regulated, response to the pathogen by the host. Our current focus is the molecular definition of these responses. To do so we are using the tools of systems biology to develop predictive models of the immune and inflammatory responses. We are also using nanotechnology to build devices with sufficient sensitivity to allow multi-parameter analysis of single cells. The long-term goals are predictive and preventive medicine.

Aderem A. How to eat something bigger than your head. Cell 110:5-8, 2002.

Hayashi F, Underhill DM, Ozinsky A, Smith KD, Yi EC, Goodlett DR, Eng JK, Aderem A. The innate immune response to bacterial flagellin is mediated by toll-like receptor-5. Nature 410:1099-103, 2001.

Aderem A, Hood L. Immunology in the post-genomic era. Nat Immunol 2:373-5, 2001.

Aderem A. Hume D. How do you see CG? Cell 103:993-6, 2000.

Aderem A, Ulevitch RJ. Toll-like receptors in the induction of the innate immune response. Nature 406:782-7, 2000.

Gold ES, Morrissette NS, Underhill DM, Guo J, Bassetti M, Aderem A. Amphiphysin IIm, a novel amphiphysin II isoform, is required for macrophage phagocytosis. Immunity 12:285-92, 2000.