The CIHR Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH), in partnership with the Canadian Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Foundation (CAAIF), Asthma Canada, and the Canadian Lung Association (CLA), continues to support the next generation of researchers advancing asthma care across Canada.

Dr. Eva Kaufmann’s project is challenging how we understand allergic asthma. Her research explores a surprising idea: that eosinophils, immune cells long known for driving inflammation, may also develop a form of “memory.” Instead of simply reacting in the moment, these cells may remember past allergen exposures and respond more aggressively over time, contributing to persistent and worsening symptoms.

By uncovering how this memory-like behavior works, and whether it can be safely redirected, this work aims to break the cycle of repeated allergic reactions at its source. The ultimate goal is to open the door to new, more targeted therapies that improve quality of life for people living with asthma.

This recognition highlights not only innovative science, but also the growing momentum of early-career researchers working to transform respiratory health.

Read More

Congratulations to the 2025 Early Career Researcher Awardees in Asthma! CIHR Website. April 22, 2026.

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To mark more than a decade of progress in trained immunity research, an international team of scientists has curated a major Focus Issue on Trained Immunity in eLife. This special collection brings together over 30 original research articles, reviews, and perspectives, showcasing the scientific advances that have shaped the field and outlining key priorities for the next generation of discovery.

🔗 Focus Issue homepage:
https://elifesciences.org/collections/2d9894e6/focus-issue-trained-immunity

International Leadership and Meakins Contributions

The Focus Issue was assembled over nearly two years by a global editorial team, including early-career investigators alongside founding leaders of the field. The editorial provides a unifying framework for understanding how trained immunity reshapes innate immune responses through metabolic, epigenetic, and functional reprogramming, and why this matters for human health.

Members of the Meakins-Christie research community played a prominent role in this collection:

• Editorial: Kaufmann E, Sohrabi Y, Domínguez-Andrés J, Novakovic B, Netea MG, van der Meer JWM
  A field-defining perspective that synthesizes the first decade of trained immunity research and articulates critical challenges and opportunities ahead, from translational applications to unresolved mechanistic questions.
  🔗 https://elifesciences.org/articles/106029
• Review article: Tran BT, Jeyanathan V, Cao R, Kaufmann E, King KY.
  A comprehensive review highlighting emerging concepts and experimental approaches in trained immunity, with relevance across infection, inflammation, and vaccinology.
• Research article: Prevel R, Pernet E, Tran KA, Sadek A, Sadeghi M, Lapshina E, Jurado LF, Kristof AS, Moumni M, Poschmann J, Divangahi M.
  Original research advancing our understanding of trained immune responses, further demonstrating the depth and breadth of contributions from the Meakins-Christie community.

Notably, many contributors to the Focus Issue are also speakers and participants in the September 2026 Trained Immunity Meeting, underscoring the strong integration between this editorial effort and the broader international research network driving the field forward.

Why Trained Immunity Matters

Trained immunity has rapidly evolved from a conceptual breakthrough into a clinically relevant framework with implications for:

• Improving vaccine efficacy and durability
• Understanding heterologous protection against infections
• Explaining maladaptive inflammation in chronic disease
• Informing host-directed therapies in cancer and infection

By reframing innate immunity as adaptable rather than static, this field opens new avenues for precision immunology and preventive medicine.

Looking Ahead

This eLife Focus Issue not only celebrates the scientific milestones of the past decade but also serves as a roadmap for future research, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches, human-centered studies, and translational impact.

We are proud to see Meakins-Christie researchers contributing to, and helping lead, this global effort to redefine how we think about immune memory.

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Focus Issue: Trained Immunity. Our latest Focus Issue looks at what we’ve learnt over the past decade and what’s next for the field of trained immunity. eLife November 2025

Kaufmann E, Sohrabi Y, Domínguez-Andrés J, Novakovic B, Netea MG, van der Meer JWM. Evolving our understanding of trained immunity. Elife. 2025 Nov 5;14:e106029.

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Dr. Kaufmann’s research program will be focused on how environmental exposures (infectious, allergic, and air pollution) influence both upper and lower airway inflammation through innate immune “training” of hematopoietic stem cells. Dr. Kaufmann received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and PhD degrees in Germany, followed by post-doctoral research training at McGill University. She then moved to Queen’s University as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Immunology and Inflammation before being recruited back to McGill.

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Dr. Maziar Divangahi’s latest study is in follow up to his previous work that showed that exposure of bone marrow stem cells to a live BCG vaccine (the only available vaccine for TB) reprograms these cells to generate protective innate immunity against TB. However, it was still not know what happened to these stem cells after they were exposed to the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). In this study, the team demonstrates that soon after Mtb infection, the bacteria translocate from the lungs to the bone marrow and reprograms stem cells to impair innate immunity against TB.

“What’s new in this study is that we now know that Mtb hijacks the immune response at the very early phase of infection by accessing the bone marrow and manipulating stem cells. This leads to the generation of impaired innate immune cells, which are effectively incapacitated to fight the infection in the lung, thus allowing the bacteria to grow.”

Dr. Nargis Khan

Once the function of the stem cells has been corrupted by the Mtb pathogen, they lose their ability to fight off the infection in the lungs. In essence, alternative approaches that crack the protective code of stem cells in the bone marrow are urgently needed to eradicate TB.

Read the News Releases:

• Stem cells are the marrow of the TB pandemic, which still kills one person every 22 seconds. Published Oct 29, 2020. RI-MUHC News
• Stem cells are the marrow of the TB pandemic. McGill Health e-News. Nov 2, 2020.

Read the publication:

Nargis Khan, Jeffrey Downey, Joaquin Sanz, Eva Kaufmann, Birte Blankenhaus, Alain Pacis, Erwan Pernet, Eisha Ahmed, Silvia Cardoso, Anastasia Nijnik, Bruce Mazer, Christopher Sassetti, Marcel A. Behr, Miguel P. Soares, Luis B. Barreiro and Maziar Divangahi. M. tuberculosis reprograms hematopoietic stem cells to limit myelopoiesis and impair trained immunity. Cell. 2020. 183(3): p752-770.E22.

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Some highlights from the article:

• β-glucan induces protective trained immunity in human monocytes infected with Mtb
• β-glucan induces protective trained immunity in mice infected with Mtb
• β-glucan-mediated protection against Mtb is dependent on IL-1 signaling
• β-glucan increases expansion of hematopoietic progenitors and myelopoiesis via IL-1

Read the entire publication here:

β-Glucan Induces Protective Trained Immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection: A Key Role for IL-1. Moorlag SJCFM, Khan N, Novakovic B, Kaufmann E, Jansen T, van Crevel R, Divangahi M, Netea MG. Cell Rep. 2020 May 19;31(7):107634.

The post Using β-glucan to Help Fight TB Infection appeared first on Meakins-Christie Laboratories.

Up until now, efforts in generating a vaccine against TB have been mainly focused on T cells, with very disappointing outcomes in both pre-clinical as well as clinical trials. Now, Dr. Divangahi’s and Barreiro’s teams have shown for the first time that when BCG is administered to mice in a way that enables access to the bone marrow, it can reprogram stem cells. Dr. Eva Kaufmann, a postdoctoral fellow working on the project, was also interviewed by Radio-Canada. (January 2018) 

About the study

BCG educates hematopoietic stem cells to generate protective innate immunity against tuberculosis by Eva Kaufmann, Joaquin Sanz, Jonathan L. Dunn, Nargis Khan, Laura E. Mendonça, Alain Pacis, Fanny Tzelepis, Erwan Pernet, Anne Dumaine, Jean-Christophe Grenier, Florence Mailhot-Léonard, Eisha Ahmed, Jad Belle, Rickvinder Besla, Bruce Mazer, Irah L. King, Anastasia Nijnik, Clinton S. Robbins, Luis B. Barreiro, and Maziar Divangahi, was published Jan. 11, 2018, in Cell. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.031

This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

View articles and interviews about this research:

• Re-programming innate immune cells to fight tuberculosis. News Release McGill University Health Centre. Jan 11, 2018.
• Re-programming innate immune cells to fight tuberculosis. McGill Health e-News. Jan 12, 2018.
• Canadian researchers learn to reprogram cells to fight TB. Radio Canada International by Levon Sevunts. Jan 11, 2018.
• Injecter autrement le BCG protège mieux contre la tuberculose. Posted on SciDevNet by Julien Chongwang. Jan 29, 2018.
• TB Vaccine Induces Innate Response via Bone Marrow Stem Cells. Posted on genengnews.com. Jan 15, 2018.
• Innate Immune Cells Reprogrammed to Fight Tuberculosis. Posted on technologynetworks.com. Jan 12, 2018.
• Des chercheurs montréalais proches d’un nouveau type de vaccin contre la tuberculose. Radio-Canada. Mar 24, 2018.

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