Dr. Mariah Hassert, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. John Harty, has been awarded an NIH F32 Fellowship entitled “Antiviral Lung Resident Memory T Cell Maintenance and Reinvigoration” from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Diet and the gut microbiome have emerged as important factors in regulating the pathobiology of multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. The Mangalam laboratory has previously shown that individuals with MS have distinct gut microbiota, with a specific depletion of gut bacteria responsible for metabolism of dietary phytoestrogen. The importance of phytoestrogen-metabolizing gut bacteria in preventing MS has been verified by the Mangalam laboratory using a mouse model of the disease (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis or EAE), where a diet rich in isoflavone (a type of phytoestrogen) protected from severe disease.