As a keynote speaker at the upcoming HudsonAlpha-Science Immunogenomics Conference, Sept. 29–Oct. 1, Dr. Mary Ellen Conley, M.D., will share how she is applying genomics technologies to uncovering answers about genetics and immunodeficiency.
The thrust of research by this noted pediatric endocrinologist and immunologist is discovering the genetics of immunodeficiency and why certain individuals suffer from a failure to develop B cells essential to healthy immune function.
“Since the mid ‘90s, my lab has used genetic approaches to identify genes that are required for B cell development,” Conley said.
“As the technology evolved, our approaches evolved. Immunodeficiencies are rare, but they provide insight into the development and function of the normal immune system and more common disorders like cancer and autoimmunity.”
Conley recently joined the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Disease at Rockefeller University in the research group of Jean-Laurent Casanova, M.D., Ph.D., studying the human genetic determinism of pediatric infectious diseases. Casanova will lead a session at the conference on “Monogenic Diseases: Insights into Immune System Function.”
Previously a physician in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and the Department of Immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Conley has long held research interests in the identification and characterization of gene defects that result in immunodeficiency, particularly defects associated with failure of B cell development.
Register for Immunogenomics 2014 at immunogenomics.com.
