La Jolla Institute for Immunology is a non-profit research organization located in

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

, California. It is located in

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

’s Research Park. The institute researches immunology and immune system diseases. The institute employs 220 M.D.s and Ph.D.s, including 23 faculty members and more than 450 employees. Dr. Mitchell Kronenberg has served as its president and scientific director since 2003. The institute was founded in 1988. La Jolla Institute for Immunology is a collaborative research organization that has forged many partnerships within the research community in San Diego, across the United States, and abroad. The institute's biomedical research facility covers 145,000 square feet inclusive of specialized research rooms suited for all aspects of molecular and cellular biology.

History

La Jolla Institute for Immunology was established in 1988 by a coalition that included Makoto Nonaka, the institute's founding president, and

Kimishige Ishizaka was a Japanese immunologist who, with his wife Teruko Ishizaka, discovered the antibody class Immunoglobulin E (IgE) in 1966–1967. Their work was regarded as a major breakthrough in the understanding of allergy. He was awarded the 1973 Gairdn ...

, the institute's first scientific director. CC-BY icon

This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under th
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
license. In 1989 the institute began its laboratory operations with the arrival of two immunologists, Kimishige Ishizaka and

Teruko Ishizaka was a Japanese scientist and immunologist who along with her husband Kimishige Ishizaka discovered the antibody class Immunoglobulin E (IgE) in 1966. Their work was regarded as a major breakthrough in the understanding of allergy, and for this ...

, from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ishizakas were co-discoverers in 1966 of the IgE (

immunoglobulin E Immunoglobulin E (IgE) is a type of antibody (or immunoglobulin (Ig) " isotype") that has been found only in mammals. IgE is synthesised by plasma cells. Monomers of IgE consist of two heavy chains (ε chain) and two light chains, with the ε c ...

) protein, a molecule that induces allergic reactions in the human body. In 1991, Kimishige Ishizaka was appointed president and scientific director of the institute and served in the role until his retirement in 1995. In 1995, Howard Grey joined La Jolla Institute of Immunology as president and scientific director. During the next several years, the institute recruited prominent faculty members and formulated a program to accelerate the commercial development of LJI's research and drug discoveries. In 1996, the institute moved from its initial location on Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla to a new purpose-built facility on Science Center Drive on the Torrey Pines Mesa. In 2003, Mitchell Kronenberg was appointed president and scientific director. That same year, the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) was established and launched. The database was designed and developed by the La Jolla Institute under a competitive contract from the

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's ...

(NIAID), part of the

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

. In 2012, the NIH renewed their contract with the institute for a further seven years. In 2006 the institute opened a new research facility located in the new

Science Research Park. In 2011, the institute opened the RNAi Center for Identifying Genetic Triggers of Disease. The center's goal is to propel scientific efforts to pinpoint the specific genes involved in causing immune diseases, cancer, and other diseases using

RNA interference RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules are involved in sequence-specific suppression of gene expression by double-stranded RNA, through translational or transcriptional repression. Historically, RNAi was known by o ...

(RNAi) technology. That same year, the La Jolla Institute and Immunology became the fifth collaborating organization to join the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. In 2013 La Jolla Institute extended its partnership with the Japanese pharmaceutical company

Kyowa Hakko Kirin is a Japanese pharmaceutical and biotechnology company under the Kirin Holdings, and is among the 40 largest in the world by revenue. The company is headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo and is a member of the Nikkei 225 stock index. History On J ...

. The six-year agreement continues a research alliance that began in 1988. In 2015 the La Jolla Institute for Immunology announced its affiliation with the

UC San Diego Health System UC San Diego Health is the academic health system of the University of California, San Diego in San Diego, California. It is the only academic health system serving San Diego and has one of only two adult Level I trauma centers in the region. In ...

. In 2018, the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology changed its name to La Jolla Institute for Immunology to reflect its current focus. In 2020, scientists at the institute formed a Coronavirus Task Force in response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. At the same time, the institute became the home of the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a research collaboration to test antibodies against the novel coronavirus,

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

, led by structural virologist

Erica Ollmann Saphire Erica Ollmann Saphire is an American structural biologist and immunologist and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. She investigates the structural biology of viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, B ...

Scientific activities

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology study the fundamental workings of the immune system. This includes studying the cells driving allergies and autoimmune diseases, as well as the cells that aim to fight cancers and infectious diseases. The institute is made up of three centers: the Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation, the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research. Scientists at LJI also lead research into genomic sequencing o
immune cells
and high-resolution imaging of virus/antibody interactions through cryo-electron microscopy. The institute is home to the Immune Epitope Database
IEDB
and th
DICE
(Database of Immune Cell Expression, Expression of quantitative trait loci and Epigenomics). Scientists at LJI, in collaboration with researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, were the first to publish an analysis of potential SARS-CoV-2

epitope An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The epitope is the specific piece of the antigen to which an antibody binds. The p ...

s vulnerable to the human immune system. Since then, COVID-19 research at LJI has shed light on how both CD+8 and CD+4 T cells respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These findings can inform vaccine efforts. Scientists at the institute have analyzed mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Additional COVID-19 projects at the institute include research to understand how the virus affects white blood cells called

monocyte Monocytes are a type of leukocyte or white blood cell. They are the largest type of leukocyte in blood and can differentiate into macrophages and conventional dendritic cells. As a part of the vertebrate innate immune system monocytes also inf ...

s and research into Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children ( MIS-C). Researchers at LJI have established several international research partnerships, including research collaborations in Nepal to study

flavivirus ''Flavivirus'' is a genus of positive-strand RNA viruses in the family ''Flaviviridae''. The genus includes the West Nile virus, dengue virus, tick-borne encephalitis virus, yellow fever virus, Zika virus and several other viruses which may caus ...

infection and collaborations in Sierra Leone to study hemorrhagic fever viruses.

References

External links

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