Seminari VHIR -Dra. Shen-Ying Zhang "Inborn errors of central nervous system intrinsic immunity in childhood viral encephalitis"

Dra. Shen-Ying Zhang, Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases The Rockefeller University, USA / Paris Descartes University, Imagine Institute, France

"Inborn errors of central nervous system intrinsic immunity in childhood viral encephalitis"

Shen-Ying Zhang, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Investigation at the Rockefeller University, and a senior researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM - CR1). In the two branches of the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases in USA and in France, she leads a team working on genetic predisposition to viral diseases mainly viral encephalitis. She has made substantial contributions to human immunology of viral infections. She played a major role in the discovery of the first five genetic etiologies of Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE). Recently, with her collaborators working on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and central nervous system (CNS) neural cell biology, she has developed a model for the molecular and cellular dissection of viral encephalitis pathogenesis based on the use of human CNS cells differentiated in vitro from patient-specific iPSCs. Furthermore, her recent effort in expanding the viral encephalitis research program from HSE to other viral encephalitis has been proven promising by strong preliminary data. Her research is mainly funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Shen-Ying Zhang is the specialty chief editor for Viral Immunology section at Frontiers in Immunology. She is a member of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies and a member of the Henry Kunkel Society

Host: Infection in Immunocompromised Pediatric Patients -  psoler@vhebron.net