Kristen Pauken

E-mail: pauk0013@umn.edu

Year entered: 2008

Advisor: Brian Fife

Degrees received:
B.S., Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Awards and Honors:
Three-year Graduate School Fellowship

Thesis research:

Our lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms involved in the induction and maintenance of peripheral tolerance to prevent and treat autoimmunity. We utilize the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of spontaneous diabetes in which autoreactive T cells mediate destruction of insulin-producing ?-cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. My work involves the investigation of negative costimulatory signals provided to inhibit T cell responses. We are particularly interested in the CTLA-4/B7 and PD-1/PD-L1 pathways because these signals are critical for limiting T cell mediated immunopathology. With our work we seek to further define when the inhibitory signals are required for initiation and/or maintenance of tolerance and how these pathways can be applied therapeutically to promote long-term graft survival in diabetes.

Publications:

• Fife BT, Pauken KE, Eagar TN, Obu T, Wu J, Tang Q, Azuma M, Krummel MF, and Bluestone JA. Interactions between programmed death-1 and programmed death ligand-1 promote tolerance by blocking the T cell receptor-induced stop signal. Nature Immunology (In press)

• Wheat WH, Pauken KE, Morris RV, Titus RG. 2008. Lutzomyia longipalpis salivary peptide maxadilan alters murine dendritic cell expression of CD80/86, CCR7, and cytokine secretion and reprograms dendritic cell-mediated cytokine release from cultures containing allogeneic T cells. J Immunol. 180(12):8286-98.