NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

William E. Paul Lecture

Dr. Germain received his Sc.B. and Sc.M. from Brown University in 1970 and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School and Harvard University in 1976. From 1976 to 1982, he served as an instructor, assistant professor, and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. From 1982 to 1987, he worked as a senior investigator in the Laboratory of Immunology (LI). In 1987, he was appointed chief of the Lymphocyte Biology Section. In 1994, Dr. Germain was named deputy chief of LI. In 2006, he became director of the NIAID Program in Systems Immunology and Infectious Disease Modeling, which became the Laboratory of Systems Biology in 2011 and for which he serves as chief of the laboratory. He is also acting chief of LI and associate director of the Trans-NIH Center for Human Immunology, Inflammation, and Autoimmunity (CHI). Since receiving his doctoral degrees, he has led a laboratory investigating basic immunobiology. He and his colleagues have made key contributions to our understanding of MHC class II molecule structure–function relationships, the cell biology of antigen processing, and the molecular basis of T cell recognition.

The Lymphocyte Biology Section (LBS) has made numerous contributions to the understanding of the cell biology of antigen processing and presentation by MHC class I and especially class II molecules. It also has examined recognition of these ligands by T cells with a focus on the signaling mechanisms involved in ligand discrimination. Since the early 2000’s, the LBS has conducted analysis of immune cell behavior in vivo using methods of intravital 2-photon imaging that it helped pioneer, providing real-time, high-resolution visualization of immune-cell dynamics in situ. More recently, the LBS has developed novel, highly multiplex section and volume imaging methods (Histo-cytometry and Ce3D) that allow an unprecedented analysis of cell phenotype, signaling, function, and location in complex tissue settings. These various imaging technologies are being used with more conventional molecular and cellular immunological methods to 1) describe the dynamics of innate and adaptive immune cell movement in lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissue; 2) localize the sites and duration of the cell-cell interactions involved in the development of adaptive immune responses; 3) analyze how differences in these aspects of cell migration and interaction affect differentiation events and functional immunity; and 4) investigate the dynamic behavior and effector activities of innate and adaptive immune cells in non-lymphoid sites.

For more information go to https://oir.nih.gov/wals