2023
January 2023: Congratulations to Sangwook, Xuming, Silvio, and the rest of the Payne lab team for the publication of our MuSK-CAART study in Nature Biotechnology. Silvio wrote a synopsis of the study for Nature Portfolio Bioengineering Community.
2022
May 2022: Congratulations to Kartik Devashish, who received the 2022 Roy and Diana Vagelos Prize for Achievement in Scientific Research. We were honored to have him in the lab for the last half of his senior thesis studying the role of CD4 and CD8 T cell subsets in CA(A)R T cells
February 2022: Congratulations to Christoph, who is the newest tenure-track Assistant Professor at Penn Dermatology and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies! You can visit him in 1005 BRB.
January 2022: The MuSK-CAART IND receives FDA clearance to initiate the MusCAARTes trial in MuSK autoantibody-positive myasthenia gravis! Thanks to all the Payne lab members who contributed, particularly Sangwook, Xuming, and Silvio, as well as our colleagues at Cabaletta Bio who collaborated on this project to bring MuSK-CAART forward from the proof-of-concept work in the laboratory to a first-in-human clinical trial. This has been an incredible journey to extend the CAART concept for antigen-specific B cell depletion to additional autoantibody-mediated diseases.
2021
October 2021: The House of Payne is back at full capacity! Welcome to our newest lab members:
And congratulations to Napatra and Christina for the publication of their report on temporal outcomes of rituximab therapy for pemphigus vulgaris, and Christoph and Damian for their review on the pathophysiology of pemphigus and pemphigoid
- Patricia Tsao, MD, PhD: Patricia has a wealth of experience in translational immunology, having served as former operations director at the Human Immunology Core and director of research at the Center for Study & Treatment of Castleman & Inflammatory Lymphadenopathies. Patricia will be working on animal models of autoimmunity and human adoptive cellular immunotherapy
- Burcin Altun, PhD: Burcin has expertise in novel immunotherapy technologies and will be working on extending the CAAR platform to membranous nephropathy and other B cell-mediated diseases
- Emma Goodman, IGG PhD candidate: We are thrilled to have Emma back in lab after having completed her rotations. She will be working on the comparative immunology of canine and human cellular immunotherapies
- Gurtej Kahlon, a postbac student, and Ujjayi Padimagantam, a Penn undergrad working with Christoph and Casey on mechanisms of fate differentiation in engineered T cells
And congratulations to Napatra and Christina for the publication of their report on temporal outcomes of rituximab therapy for pemphigus vulgaris, and Christoph and Damian for their review on the pathophysiology of pemphigus and pemphigoid
June 2021: Payne lab celebrates the start of summer and our 100% vaccination rate with an outing to Morris Arboretum
- Welcome to Henry Utset, an incoming Penn MSTP student rotating for the summer
- Farewell and all the best to Baomei, who will be moving to a Senior Scientist position at Genentech; Ellyssa, who will be starting her MD-PhD at Ohio State in the fall; and Christina, who will do her internship at Pennsylvania Hospital then dermatology residency at Stanford
- Congratulations to Christoph for his graduation from Dermatology residency, promotion to Clinical Instructor, receipt of a Derm Foundation Career Development Award, and perfect score on his K08. With past as prelude, we expect great things from his future scientific discoveries!
2020
October 2020: Payne lab has grown! We celebrated with a physically-distanced, socially-connected hike to Hawk Mountain to welcome to all the new members who joined the Payne lab this fall, and bid farewell to Jimmy Tarrant, DVM, who will be joining the Gene Therapy Program at Penn:
- Damian Maseda, PhD (Senior Research Investigator): DSG3-CAART translational studies, humanized mouse models for cellular immunotherapy, and comparative immunology of canine and human cellular immunotherapies
- Britt Levy, DVM (COHA fellow and newly minted fellow of the AVCD): comparative immunology of human and canine pemphigus and canine CAART therapy
- Casey Lee (MD-PhD student, immunology): single cell CAART profiling and regulatory pathways for CAART differentiation
- Emma Goodman (rotating PhD student, immunology): canine cellular immunotherapy
October 2020: Many thanks to 2017 Wharton grads Shabnam Eghbali, Sumun Khetpal, and Irene Park, who founded the non-profit organization Theia and interviewed me for their podcast episode on balancing academia and life sciences entrepreneurship, now online on Spotify and Medium
October 2020: Sangwook presents his latest data on MuSK CAAR T cell development at the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) Scientific Session
August 2020: Jinmin's paper reporting the definitive preclinical studies that supported the DSG3-CAART Investigational New Drug application is published in Journal of Clinical Investigation
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July 2020:
COVID, racial justice, and the value of Penn's international community have been the focus of many discussions over the last several months. I am grateful for our dedicated team that has maintained our essential research and phased return to lab during these challenging times. Virtual Payne (ViP) lab meetings have been a highlight of each week. |
Many updates this month:
All the best to Daniel, who left Philadelphia to begin his graduate studies in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program
Christoph rejoins the lab to continue his work on novel cellular immunotherapy technologies and to better understand the pathophysiologic role of invariant T cell subsets in oncology, autoimmunity, and infection
Aimee is very sentimental about being promoted to Professor, 27 years after starting her MD-PhD training. This wouldn’t have been possible without her family, her mentors and colleagues at Stanford, Wash U, Penn and around the world, and her laboratory members past and present who supported her along the way. For all the physician-scientists in the pipeline or contemplating the career path, focus on your science, pick your battles, and hang in there - it's absolutely worth the struggle!
All the best to Daniel, who left Philadelphia to begin his graduate studies in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program
Christoph rejoins the lab to continue his work on novel cellular immunotherapy technologies and to better understand the pathophysiologic role of invariant T cell subsets in oncology, autoimmunity, and infection
Aimee is very sentimental about being promoted to Professor, 27 years after starting her MD-PhD training. This wouldn’t have been possible without her family, her mentors and colleagues at Stanford, Wash U, Penn and around the world, and her laboratory members past and present who supported her along the way. For all the physician-scientists in the pipeline or contemplating the career path, focus on your science, pick your battles, and hang in there - it's absolutely worth the struggle!
February 2020: Napatra's retrospective on the clinical outcomes of rituximab in pemphigoid is published in JAAD, paired with more detailed outcomes and discussion in a Mendeley supplemental dataset
2019
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November 2019: Payne lab goes SkyHigh! Grateful to work with such a talented and committed team. Wishing Jinmin Lee farewell and good luck as she starts her new position as a Senior Scientist at Cabaletta Bio |
October 2019: Carolyn and Napatra's paper on factors predictive of complete remission after rituximab therapy for pemphigus is published in JAMA Dermatology. Thanks to JAMA Dermatology for their podcast featuring our article
October 2019: Congratulations to Sangwook for his plenary presentation on MuSK CAAR T cells for myasthenia gravis at the American Neurological Association meeting in St. Louis, which was highlighted as a featured abstract
October 2019: Congratulations to Sangwook for his plenary presentation on MuSK CAAR T cells for myasthenia gravis at the American Neurological Association meeting in St. Louis, which was highlighted as a featured abstract
September 2019: DSG3-CAART IND receives FDA clearance to initiate the first-in-human DesCAARTes trial in mucosal pemphigus vulgaris! The Payne lab is proud and grateful to have worked with the experienced Penn/CHOP teams that supported the IND, in alliance with Cabaletta Bio. Many thanks to the Penn/CHOP teams including preclinical (Milone/Fraietta labs, vet school Comparative Pathology Core, Stem Cell and Xenograft Core), manufacturing (Cell and Vaccine Production Facility, CHOP vector core), clinical/regulatory (Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, Translational Correlative Studies Laboratory, plus the DesCAARTes investigators David Porter/Rob Micheletti/Victoria Werth/Noelle Frey/Elizabeth Hexner, Daniel Shin). We are also thankful for the support from offices throughout Penn who helped us to usher this technology from the bench to the clinic (Penn Center for Innovation, Office of General Counsel, Office of Clinical Research, Penn Center for Precision Medicine, Institute for Immunology).
September 2019: Christoph and Daniel's review on genetically engineered therapies for autoimmunity is published in Current Opinions in Immunology
June 2019: Farewell and best wishes to visiting scholar Napatra Tovanabutra, MD, who will be returning to his faculty position at Chiang Mai University, Thailand
May 2019: Welcome to Ellyssa Sherman, a master's student at Thomas Jefferson University, who will be completing her thesis on B cell tolerance checkpoints in pemphigus vulgaris
May 2019: Establishment of the Penn Clinical Autoimmunity Center of Excellence, funded by NIAID. Aimee is proud to be working with Amit Bar-Or, MD, and Nina Luning Prak, MD, PhD, to investigate B cells as drivers of autoimmunity in a broad range of autoimmune diseases. Thanks to Knowledge@Wharton SiriusXM Channel 132 and the Daily Pennsylvanian for featuring our new center.
March 2019: Christoph delivers the Quo Vadis Lecture at the ADF meeting in Munich
January 2019: Payne lab welcomes Insuk Choe, JD, who will coordinate our Clinical Autoimmunity Center of Excellence and Canine CAAR Club (3C) programs on campus
January 2019: Payne lab welcomes Insuk Choe, JD, who will coordinate our Clinical Autoimmunity Center of Excellence and Canine CAAR Club (3C) programs on campus
2018
October 2018: Eric writes an awesome blogpost for Science Trends on his recent paper published in Cell Reports. Aimee is lamenting her poor social media skills so please share, tweet, and retweet!
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October 2018: Aimee is very excited to be working with Nicky Mason on a new Transformative R01 research award to develop novel cellular therapies for canine cancers and autoimmune diseases
Also, welcome to Baomei Wang, a new senior research investigator who will be spearheading the canine CAART project along with Xuming Mao and Daniel Lundgren |
August 2018: Christoph and Eric's paper on isotype-specific repertoire cloning in pemphigus is published in Cell Reports
August 2018: Welcome back Daniel Lundgren! Daniel worked in the lab as an undergraduate and we are super excited to have him back as a research specialist focusing on preclinical development of CAART technology
June 2018: Carolyn's oral presentation at the International Investigative Dermatology meeting on factors predictive of complete remission off therapy after rituximab is picked up by Dermatology News
May 2018: Aimee helps to organize the International Pemphigus and Pemphigoid Foundation 5th Scientific Meeting, Pemphigus and Pemphigoid: A New Era of Translational and Clinical Science, May 15-16 in Orlando, FL. The meeting report is published in Frontiers in Medicine.
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May 2018: Congratulations on medical school graduation, Dr. Nina Ran and Dr. Eric Mukherjee! |
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May 2018: Welcome to UVA undergraduate Sophie Breedveld who is joining us for the summer
May 2018: Jinmin's review on applications of CAR technology to immune-mediated diseases is published in Cell and Gene Therapy Insights
May 2018: Jinmin's review on applications of CAR technology to immune-mediated diseases is published in Cell and Gene Therapy Insights
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May 2018: Congratulations to Nina on the successful defense of her Masters in Translational Research, which investigated tolerance checkpoints in pemphigus vulgaris through single B cell receptor profiling |
February 2018: Payne lab welcomes Baby Oh (Oh Baby!)
2017
September 2017: Welcome to postdoctoral fellow Sangwook Oh, PhD, previously from Seoul National University
June 2017: Mike Milone and Aimee receive a Penn Center for Precision Medicine Accelerator Fund Award to support the preclinical development of DSG-CAART technology
May 2017: Xuming's paper on Stat3 regulation of desmoglein 3 transcription is published in JCI Insight
June 2017: Mike Milone and Aimee receive a Penn Center for Precision Medicine Accelerator Fund Award to support the preclinical development of DSG-CAART technology
May 2017: Xuming's paper on Stat3 regulation of desmoglein 3 transcription is published in JCI Insight
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April 2017: Christoph and Aimee travel to Washington, DC to accept the "Top 10" Clinical Research Achievement Award (highlighted at 11:30) |
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