Jie Luo, PhD

Assistant Research Professor
Primary Department
Microbiology, Immunology, & Tropical Medicine
Secondary Department
Neurology & Rehabilitation Medicine
Affiliation
School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Research Interests

Our primary goal is to answer three fundamental questions: (1) what initiates and sustains myasthenia gravis, (2) how the intrinsic properties of autoantibody determine its pathogenicity, and (3) how to specifically suppress the pathological autoimmune response in myasthenia gravis without suppressing desirable immune responses.  To address these questions, we mechanistically dissect the molecular and cellular mechanisms of myasthenia gravis using cutting edge technologies such as transgenic rodent models, protein crystallography, and artificial intelligence-based structure prediction.  We employ both vaccine-based and cell-based approaches to developing antigen-specific immunotherapy for this disease.  We developed a therapeutic vaccine that exhibits high efficacy and safety profile in treatment of rodent experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis.  Our ultimate goal is to translate our pre-clinical findings into clinical practice through multidisciplinary efforts.

Keywords

Myasthenia gravis, autoimmune illness, immunotherapy,

Research Level
T0 / T1: Basic Science Discovery and Initial Translation to Humans