A postdoctoral fellowship position is newly available in the laboratory of Miriam Shelef, MD, PhD. The Shelef lab studies basic mechanisms of immunity, inflammation, and autoimmune disease. Ongoing areas of research in the lab include (1) determining why rheumatoid arthritis patients have reduced response to pertussis vaccination (based on initial findings in our lab: Holmes et al. Reduced Antibody Titers Against Pertussis in Rheumatoid Arthritis.Manuscript in preparation), (2) identifying novel autoimmune antibodies and understanding the mechanism of their formation in rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and ankylosing spondylitis (based on new methodology used by our lab: Zheng and Bawadekar et al. High Density Peptide Array Generates New Insights into Autoantibody Reactivity in Rheumatoid Arthritis. Manuscript in preparation.), (3) determining how genetic variants that predispose individuals to rheumatoid arthritis dysregulate the immune system (Studies would use the new UW Rheumatology Biorepository established by the Shelef lab with samples from hundreds of subjects with autoimmune disease and permission to recontact for future studies. Similar study from our lab: Mergaert et al. Genetic Variant in PADI4 Correlates with Increased Neutrophil Extracellular Traps and Autoantibodies in Rheumatoid Arthritis. Manuscript in preparation.), (4) revealing how the citrullinating enzymes, peptidylarginine deiminase 2 and 4, contribute to immunity, inflammation, and rheumatoid arthritis (building upon: Holmes et al. Defining a Role for Citrullination in Neutrophil Extracellular Trap-like Structures. Manuscript in preparation; Shelef et al. Peptidylarginine Deiminase 4 Contributes to Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha-Induced Inflammatory Arthritis. Arthritis and Rheumatology. 2014; Bawadekar et al. Peptidylarginine Deiminase 2 is Required for Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha-Induced Citrullination and Arthritis, but Not Neutrophil Extracellular Trap Formation. Journal of Autoimmunity. 2017.), and (5) identifying circulating synovial fibroblasts in the bloodstream of rheumatoid arthritis patients to develop a “liquid biopsy” similar to cutting edge approaches in cancer.
Contact Miriam Shelef (mshelef@medicine.wisc.edu)if you are interested in joining our team!