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. Supplementing these MHC II-bound peptides either into the periphery or directly into the CSF ameliorated CNS autoimmune disease. Further analyses by flow cytometry unveiled marked increase in regulatory T cells as well as non-classical suppressor CD4 T cells in the CNS-draining lymph nodes in mice co-immunized with MOG and MBP when compared to MOG immunization alone. A role for endogenous peptide presentation in actively contributing to CNS immunosurveillance 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.