Carver College of Medicine Events
Frontiers in Obesity, Diabetes and Metabolism Seminar - Katie Robinson, MD, PhD
Monday, March 23, 2026 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Please join us on Monday, March 23rd at 1:00 PM in 1289 CBRB (Kelch) where Katie Robinson, MD, PhD will be giving a talk titled, "Enhancing MACE Risk Prediction with Estimated Visceral Adiposity using Machine Learning".
Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Program Thesis Defense Seminar: Hannah Stutt
Monday, March 23, 2026 2:00pm
Hannah Stutt is a PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. Her research has been conducted in Dr. Nandakumar Narayanan's laboratory.
If you are unable to attend in person, please consider showing your support and attending via Zoom. Please email britt-hokanson@uiowa.edu for the zoom link.
"Rural Community-Centered Research: Maternity Care and Why It Matters" — Keynote lecture (in person and virtual) by Katy Kozhimannil, University of Minnesota
Tuesday, March 24, 2026 7:30am
Special Preliminary Event for the Obermann Symposium "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."
This lecture, co-sponsored by the UI Carver College of Medicine, is designed for a non-clinical audience and will be open to the public. Katy B. Kozhimannil is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Co-Director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center and the University of Minnesota Rural Health Program.
The lecture will take place in Pediatric...
Molecular Physiology and Biophysics Seminar, Alexander (Sasha) Sobolevsky, PhD
Tuesday, March 24, 2026 9:30am to 10:30am
Neuroscience & Pharmacology Postdoctoral Seminar - Xuchen Zhang, PhD
Tuesday, March 24, 2026 10:30am to 11:30am
Re-creating a synapse
Xuchen Zhang, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Depts. of Molecular and Cellular Physiology & of Neurosurgery
Stanford University
Recent Articles from the University of Iowa
Loss of Infectivity of Influenza Virus and SARS-CoV‑2 during Aerosol Sampling
Monday, March 16, 2026
Our understanding of transmission of influenza virus and other respiratory viruses is limited by the difficulty of detecting infectious viruses in aerosol particles. Most aerosol sampling methods are believed to contribute to virus inactivation, but the magnitude of this sampling artifact is unknown. To investigate this question, we aerosolized influenza A virus (IAV) and SARS-CoV-2 suspended in human saliva into a small chamber (3.7 L). Aerosols settled for 10 min onto either cells or a thin...
The interplay between temperature and growth phase shapes the transcriptional landscape of <em>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</em>
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a highly versatile bacterium capable of surviving and often thriving in stressful environmental conditions. Here, we report the effect of two environmental conditions, temperature and growth phase, on the P. aeruginosa PAO1 transcriptome. As P. aeruginosa is well-known for its growth phase dependent phenotypes and gene regulation, our goal was to determine how temperature altered global gene expression at exponential versus stationary phase and to characterize how...
Case Report: Novel <em>MAGT1</em> pathogenic variant with significant atopy, hypogammaglobulinemia and viral skin infections
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
CONCLUSION: This case illustrates how a synergistic multi-disciplinary team approach established a diagnosis of XMEN disease in a patient with an atypical clinical presentation. This case also highlights a growing trend where established diagnostic tools such as flow-cytometry and genomics can be complemented with newer, sophisticated analytical approaches such as AlphaFold to further elucidate the functionally crippling effects of novel variants described in the setting of IEI.
BDCA2 plays a central role in the binding, internalization and response of plasmacytoid dendritic cells to vidutolimod
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
INTRODUCTION: Vidutolimod (Vidu) is a nanosized virus-like particle (VLP) composed of the Qβ bacteriophage capsid assembled around a Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) agonist. In situ immunization with Vidu through intratumoral injection can induce a systemic anti-tumor immune response and has shown promise in early phase cancer clinical trials. Activation of intratumoral plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), and their production of type I interferon (IFN), plays a key role in initiating the anti-tumor...
Hypoxic stress granules trigger immunogenic dormancy in lung cancer
Friday, February 27, 2026
Induction of the MHC class I antigen processing and presentation pathway (C1APP) is a critical part of the IFN-γ response necessary for effective cytotoxic immunity against tumors of epithelial origin^(1,2). Loss of this response is associated with worse disease outcomes and renders patients refractory to immunotherapies^(3-6). Without C1APP induction, tumor cells cannot optimally process and present immunopeptides from tumor-associated antigens (TAA) and neoantigens to effector cytotoxic T...
CD4<sup>+</sup> T-Cell-Intrinsic IL-6 Is Critical for Th17 Differentiation and Dampened Responsiveness to CD8<sup>+</sup> T Cell-Mediated Suppression
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
This study investigates the role of T-cell-intrinsic IL-6 in Th17 differentiation and effector resistance. Using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated Il6 knockdown in primary human CD4^(+) T-cells, we demonstrate that T-cell-produced IL-6 is crucial for the optimal development of Th17 cells. Lack of T-cell-endogenous Il6 resulted in impaired IL-17A production as well as significantly increased responsiveness to immune suppression. Importantly, these effects could not be reversed by the addition of exogenous...
The neutralizing antibody titer correlate of COVID-19 risk in the COVID-19 variant immunologic landscape (COVAIL) trial was not modified by SARS-CoV-2 amino acid sequence distances
Monday, February 16, 2026
In the Coronavirus Variant Immunologic Landscape Trial (COVAIL) conducted in the United States in 2022-2023, 985 participants received a second COVID-19 booster with one of twelve monovalent or bivalent mRNA inserts. Pseudovirus serum inhibitory dilution 50% neutralizing antibody titer (nAb titer) measured two-weeks post booster significantly associated with lower COVID-19 incidence over six months follow-up in this trial. COVAIL investigators sequenced SARS-CoV-2 Spike amino acid sequences for...
Estimated Effectiveness of 2024-2025 COVID-19 Vaccination Against Severe COVID-19
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this multicenter, case-control analysis of VE, 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccines may have provided protection against hospitalizations and severe in-hospital outcomes as multiple JN.1 descendant lineages circulated. Monitoring COVID-19 VE, including stratifying by SARS-CoV-2 lineage and spike protein mutations, remains important to guide COVID-19 vaccine composition and recommendations.
A Quantitative Lung Mucin Score to Identify Chronic Bronchitis
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
CONCLUSIONS: The MUCQ metric was superior in distinguishing patients with CB compared to a total mucin concentration. Trials are needed to ascertain the prospective use of MUCQ metrics in research and clinical settings for assessment, management, and tracking therapeutic responses in CB and potentially other muco-obstructive conditions. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and others.).
Immortalization and characterization of Schwann cell lines derived from NF1-associated cutaneous neurofibromas
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an autosomal dominant condition in which patients are heterozygous for a disruptive pathogenic variant in the NF1 gene. The most characteristic feature of the condition NF1 is the neurofibroma, a benign, multi-cellular tumor which initiates when a cell of the Schwann cell lineage gains a somatic pathogenic variant of the other NF1 allele. Neurofibromas developing at nerve termini in the skin are termed "cutaneous" neurofibromas (cNFs), while those developing...