Katherine A. Fitzgerald

Last updated

Katherine Fitzgerald
Born
Katherine A. Fitzgerald

Ireland
CitizenshipUnited States of America
Alma mater University College Cork,
Trinity College Dublin
Scientific career
Thesis Signal transduction processes regulating CD44 expression and CD44-mediated changes in pro-inflammatory gene expression  (1999)

Katherine A. Fitzgerald is an Irish-born American molecular biologist and virologist. [1] She is a professor of medicine currently working in the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is also the director of the Program in Innate Immunity. [2]

Contents

Education

Fitzgerald received her B.Sc. degree in biochemistry in 1995 from University College Cork. [1] She received her Ph.D. in 1999 from Trinity College Dublin, [3] studying with Luke O'Neill. [1] Following her Ph.D., she was postdoc at Trinity College Dublin until 2004 when she moved to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. [4]

Research

Fitzgerald is known for her research in the field of innate immunity and the biology behind inflammatory responses in diseases. [5] She conducts research on many aspects of innate immunity such as the molecular basis of pathogen recognition, [6] the innate immunity to malaria, [7] and the impact with diseases such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. [8] In 2021, Fitzgerald published results on an antiviral option to block replication in SARS-CoV-2, the viral agent responsible for COVID-19. [9]

Awards and honors

In 2011, Fitzgerald was a finalist for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. [10] In 2015, she was awarded the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) St. Patrick's Day Science Medal, and she is the first woman to win the award. [11] She has been recognized by Clarivate as a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of immunology by Clarivate every year from 2014 to 2021 for being in the top 1% of authors cited in her field. [12] [13] In 2020, she was admitted into the Royal Irish Academy, one of Ireland's most prestigious academic bodies, [14] [15] and was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology. [16] In 2021 she was elected to the United States' National Academy of Sciences [17] and the National Academy of Medicine. [18]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

UMass Chan Medical School is a public medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is part of the University of Massachusetts system. It is home to three schools: the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, as well as a biomedical research enterprise and a range of public-service initiatives throughout the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Vilček</span> Slovak immunologist (born 1933)

Jan T. Vilček is a Slovak-American biomedical scientist, educator, inventor and philanthropist. He is a professor in the department of microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine, and chairman and CEO of The Vilcek Foundation. Vilček received his M.D. degree from Comenius University Medical School in Bratislava in 1957; and his Ph.D. in Virology from the Institute of Virology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, in 1962.

In immunology, an adjuvant is a substance that increases or modulates the immune response to a vaccine. The word "adjuvant" comes from the Latin word adiuvare, meaning to help or aid. "An immunologic adjuvant is defined as any substance that acts to accelerate, prolong, or enhance antigen-specific immune responses when used in combination with specific vaccine antigens."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lymphocyte antigen 96</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Lymphocyte antigen 96, also known as "Myeloid Differentiation factor 2 (MD-2)," is a protein that in humans is encoded by the LY96 gene.

Charles Alderson Janeway, Jr. (1943–2003) was a noted immunologist who helped create the modern field of innate immunity. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he held a faculty position at Yale University's Medical School and was an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macrophage migration inhibitory factor</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), also known as glycosylation-inhibiting factor (GIF), L-dopachrome isomerase, or phenylpyruvate tautomerase is a protein that in humans is encoded by the MIF gene. MIF is an important regulator of innate immunity. The MIF protein superfamily also includes a second member with functionally related properties, the D-dopachrome tautomerase (D-DT). CD74 is a surface receptor for MIF.

Ruslan Maksutovich Medzhitov is a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, a member of Yale Cancer Center, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His research focuses on the analysis of the innate immune system, inflammatory response, innate control of the adaptive immunity, and host-pathogen interactions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stimulator of interferon genes</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Stimulator of interferon genes (STING), also known as transmembrane protein 173 (TMEM173) and MPYS/MITA/ERIS is a protein that in humans is encoded by the STING1 gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gunther Hartmann</span> German immunologist and clinical pharmacologist

Gunther Hartmann is a German immunologist and clinical pharmacologist. Since 2007 he has been the Director of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital of the University of Bonn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabrielle Belz</span> Australian immunologist

Gabrielle T. Belz is an Australian molecular immunologist and viral immunologist. She is a faculty member of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, within the Molecular Immunology division. Belz has made important contributions to the understanding of immune system function, especially in relation to the molecular and cellular signalling pathways of immune response to viruses. Her research has focused on understanding the signals that drive the initial development of protective immunity against pathogen infections, such as influenza and herpes viruses. This includes research into how cytotoxic T cells recognise and remove virally-infected cells from the body following infection. Research into the description of the specific factors and response during infection will contribute towards the long-term development of vaccines for infectious disease, and the development of better treatments for autoimmune diseases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akiko Iwasaki</span> Immunobiologist

Akiko Iwasaki is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She is also a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research interests include innate immunity, autophagy, inflammasomes, sexually transmitted infections, herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, respiratory virus infections, influenza infection, T cell immunity, commensal bacteria, COVID-19 and Long COVID.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luke O'Neill (scientist)</span> Irish biochemist (born 1964)

Luke Anthony John O'Neill is an Irish biochemist. He has been a professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin since 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michel C. Nussenzweig</span> Brazilian immunologist

Michel C. Nussenzweig is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology at The Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is a member of both the US National Academy of Medicine and the US National Academy of Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Rudensky</span>

Alexander Rudensky is an immunologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center known for his research on regulatory T cells and the transcription factor Foxp3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Papavasiliou</span> Immunologist

Nina Papavasiliou is an immunologist and Helmholtz Professor in the Division of Immune Diversity at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. She is also an adjunct professor at the Rockefeller University, where she was previously associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology. She is best known for her work in the fields of DNA and RNA editing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Manuel Mota</span> Portuguese scientist, researcher, imunologist

Maria Manuel Mota is a Portuguese malariologist and executive director of the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes, Lisbon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mihai Netea</span>

Mihai G. Netea is a Romanian Dutch physician and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, specialized in infectious disease, immunology, and global health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vishva Dixit</span> Kenyan molecular biologist

Vishva Mitra Dixit is a physician of Indian origin who is the current Vice President of Discovery Research at Genentech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elina Zúñiga</span> Argentinian immunologist

Elina Zúñiga is an Argentinian Immunologist and Professor of Molecular Biology in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Zúñiga has made critical discoveries regarding host-virus interactions in both acute and chronic infections. Using lymphocytic choriomeningitis models (LCMV) and murine cytomegalovirus models, her laboratory at UCSD studies host immune adaptations in chronic viral disease and methods of viral suppression of the immune system in order to develop novel methods and identify novel targets of anti-viral defence. In 2018, Zúñiga was chosen by the American Association of Immunologists to give the international Vanguard Lecture. Zúñiga is also co-founder of the Global Immunotalks series which she and Carla Rothlin started in 2020 as a means to make cutting-edge immunology research freely available and easily accessible to a global audience.

Jean Langhorne is a British biologist who is a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute. Langhorne has studied immune responses to malaria and Plasmodium falciparum. She was awarded the 2016 EMBO-BioMalPar Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on malaria immunology. She is Associate Editor of PLOS Pathogens and on the Advisory Board of Trends in Immunology.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Dr. Katherine A. Fitzgerald, Ph.D." The Milstein Awards. 21 June 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  2. ↑ "Program in Innate Immunity". 22 October 2014. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  3. ↑ Fitzgerald, Katherine (1999). Signal transduction processes regulating CD44 expression and CD44-mediated changes in pro-inflammatory gene expression (Thesis). OCLC   842504391.
  4. ↑ "Principal Investigator". UMass Chan Medical School. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  5. ↑ "Katherine Fitzgerald focuses on novel discoveries in innate immunity". University of Massachusetts Medical School. 2 August 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  6. ↑ Paludan, Søren R.; Bowie, Andrew G.; Horan, Kristy A.; Fitzgerald, Katherine A. (2011). "Recognition of herpesviruses by the innate immune system". Nature Reviews Immunology. 11 (2): 143–154. doi:10.1038/nri2937. ISSN   1474-1733. PMC   3686362 . PMID   21267015.
  7. ↑ Gazzinelli, Ricardo T.; Kalantari, Parisa; Fitzgerald, Katherine A.; Golenbock, Douglas T. (2014). "Innate sensing of malaria parasites". Nature Reviews Immunology. 14 (11): 744–757. doi:10.1038/nri3742. ISSN   1474-1733. PMID   25324127. S2CID   23050925.
  8. ↑ "Richter, Fitzgerald named to newly endowed chairs". UMass Medical School. 2015.
  9. ↑ Humphries, Fiachra; Shmuel-Galia, Liraz; Jiang, Zhaozhao; Wilson, Ruth; Landis, Philip; Ng, Sze-Ling; Parsi, Krishna Mohan; Maehr, Rene; Cruz, John; Morales, Angel; Ramanjulu, Joshi M. (18 May 2021). "A diamidobenzimidazole STING agonist protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection". Science Immunology. 6 (59): eabi9002. doi:10.1126/sciimmunol.abi9002. PMC   8158975 . PMID   34010139.
  10. ↑ "The Vilcek Foundation -". www.vilcek.org. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  11. ↑ O’Connell, Claire (16 March 2015). "Irish researcher Katherine Fitzgerald receives St Patrick's Day Science Medal - Discovery | siliconrepublic.com - Ireland's Technology News Service". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  12. ↑ Megan, Bard (4 February 2016). "Fitzgerald named again in Thomson Reuters Report on most influential scientific minds".
  13. ↑ Pressestelle, BVDD (January 2022). "Prof. Dirk Schadendorf als "Highly Cited Researcher" ausgezeichnet". Der Deutsche Dermatologe. 70 (1): 71. doi:10.1007/s15011-022-4872-7. ISSN   0340-8078. S2CID   246155863.
  14. ↑ "Royal Irish Academy - Katherine Fitzgerald". 7 January 2020.
  15. ↑ Spencer, Susan (2020). "UMMS immunologist Katherine Fitzgerald admitted to Royal Irish Academy".
  16. ↑ "Katherine Fitzgerald and Sanjay Ram elected to American Academy of Microbiology". UMass Chan Medical School. 24 February 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  17. ↑ "News from the National Academy of Sciences". 26 April 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Newly elected members and their affiliations at the time of election are: ... Fitzgerald, Katherine A.; professor, department of medicine, and Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research Chair, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester
  18. ↑ "National Academy of Medicine Elects 100 New Members". National Academy of Medicine. 18 October 2021. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.