The Bhagirath Singh Early Career Award in Infection and Immunity 2024 Recipient

Joshua Koenig

Food allergies against some allergens, like peanut, are lifelong in most people. The immune system "remembers" that we are allergic over this time by making a specific kind of antibody, called IgE, against the food. The memory of allergies is held by memory immune cells of two types: memory B cells and memory T cells. In recently published work, we discovered a new type of memory B cell that we have called "MBC2", which we found is connected to making allergic IgE antibodies in humans. In unpublished work, we have learned that memory T cells can also hold the memory of allergies. How much each of these two cells contributes to the overall allergic memory response, and therefore their role in maintaining persistent allergic diseases, is not known and is the focus of this grant. Understanding the role of each of these cells is a necessary step to developing therapies that can interfere with memory cells and hopefully provide durable protection from food allergy.

Date modified:

2026-02-26