Award
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases 1R21AI199745-01
Deciphering impact of immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motifs in natural killer cells
Recipient
University of California, San Francisco
Award Amount
$246,000.00
Ceiling
$246,000.00
Awarded
May 20, 2026
Identifier
1R21AI199745-01
This award funds research to understand how ITAMs influence natural killer cell function, with potential to improve immunotherapies for diseases such as cancer and viral infections.
Description
Natural killer (NK) cells are innate immune cells tasked with the recognition of harmful cells including virally infected cells and cancerous cells. They rely on cell surface receptors that relay information through adaptor molecules that contain activating motifs known as “ITAMs”. Recently, these ITAMs have been found to have counterintuitive influences on lymphocyte function, therefore, understanding how they influence NK cell function has important therapeutic relevance with the potential to enhance immunotherapies to disease.