Awarded in 2023
Home Department: Immunology, Medicine
Faculty Advisors: Mark Davis (Microbiology & Immunology), Prasanna Jagannathan (Medicine - Infectious Diseases, Microbiology & Immunology), and Sarah Heilshorn (Materials Science & Engineering)

Research Title: Modeling Immune Responses to Malaria Infection and Vaccination in Human Spleen Organoids

Research Description: Mechanistic studies of human-pathogen interactions are limited by lack of accessible disease models but are necessary for dissecting immune responses to infections. Immune organoids generated from human spleens provide the accurate tissue- and species-context to study Plasmodium falciparum malaria which, despite its high childhood mortality, lacks an effective vaccine. Karan will use spleen organoids to study the magnitude and antigen specificity of antibody responses to blood-stage P. falciparum in infection-naïve individuals. Using these data, he will immunize organoids with mRNA vaccines encoding blood-stage antigens to induce parasite growth-inhibiting antibodies. Karan’s proposed work will establish a platform for P. falciparum infection and vaccination in human tissue that enables cellular and genetic perturbations to uncover mechanistic insights.