June 17, 2021

Marion Pepper Awarded the 2021 ICIS-LUMINEX John R. Kettman Award for Excellence in Interferon & Cytokine Research

The 2021 ICIS-Luminex John R. Kettman Award for Excellence in Interferon & Cytokine Research Mid-career recognizes Marion Pepper, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington, as being in the very top tier of the current wave of mid-career immunologists who continue to make cytokine research exciting.

While a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Marion pioneered the use of transgenic parasites that expressed model antigens in a series of studies to understand the events that lead to T cell production of IFN-gamma required for resistance to this pathogen. This was followed by studies that were the first to show that plasmacytoid DC (pDC) were activated during non-viral infections and acted as a source of early IL-12 required for resistance to this infection. At the time the predominant dogma was that pDC did not present antigen and her studies, were perhaps one of the first showing that pDC from sites of inflammation could present antigen. It was during this time that she developed an interest in the ability to manipulate pathogens but also to identify the relevant antigenic peptides recognized by T and B cells that mediate long-term adaptive resistance to infection, which remain the core principles of her scientific career. Read the full article here.