Min Woo Kim
Program: Immunology
Current advisor: Jonathan Kipnis, PhD
Undergraduate university: University of California-Los Angeles
Research summary
The focus of my project is to better understand central nervous system (CNS) autoantigens and their function in CNS immunosurveillance. To do so, we characterized the MHC II peptidome of CNS tissues and identified an abundance of endogenous peptides being presented. Fascinatingly, we found that cultivating T cells against myelin basic protein (MBP) could ameliorate autoimmune CNS disease; we utilized myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)35-55 peptide immunization in C57BL/6J mice as our model for active experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE). Further analyses by flow cytometry unveiled marked increase in regulatory T cells in the CNS-draining lymph nodes in mice co-immunized with MOG and MBP when compared to MOG immunization alone. The role MBP presentation plays in modulating T cell response towards that of suppression remains an intriguing question.
Graduate publications
Barclay KM, Abduljawad N, Cheng Z, Kim MW, Zhou L, Yang J, Rustenhoven J, Mazzitelli JA, Smyth LCD, Kapadia D, Brioschi S, Beatty W, Hou J, Saligrama N, Colonna M, Yu G, Kipnis J, Li Q. 2024 An inducible genetic tool to track and manipulate specific microglial states reveals their plasticity and roles in remyelination. Immunity, 57(6):1394-1412.e8.
Smyth LCD, Xu D, Okar SV, Dykstra T, Rustenhoven J, Papadopoulos Z, Bhasiin K, Kim MW, Drieu A, Mamuladze T, Blackburn S, Gu X, Gaitán MI, Nair G, Storck SE, Du S, White MA, Bayguinov P, Smirnov I, Dikranian K, Reich DS, Kipnis J. 2024 Identification of direct connections between the dura and the brain. Nature, 627(8002):165-73.
Chen X, Firulyova M, Manis M, Herz J, Smirnov I, Aladyeva E, Wang C, Bao X, Finn MB, Hu H, Shchukina I, Kim MW, Yuede CM, Kipnis J, Artyomov MN, Ulrich JD, Holtzman DM. 2023 Microglia-mediated T cell infiltration drives neurodegeneration in tauopathy. Nature, 615(7953):668-77.