Judith Woodfolk Lab

Division of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology:
WOODFOLK LAB

Identifying allergen-specific effector and T follicular helper cells in the blood and lungs of children with asthma is the focus of research in the lab run by Judith Woodfolk, MD, PhD. Dr. Woodfolk, associate professor in the Allergy division, and her lab team have been busy publishing and presenting their findings in journals and at meetings, and have several new grants to support their work. Here are some highlights:

Presentations 

• Rachana Agrawal, PhD, presented an oral abstract at the February 2015 meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) in Houston.
• Jake Eccles, BS, a graduate student in the Medical Scientist Training Program, joined the Woodfolk lab in December 2014.
• Lyndsey Muehling, MS, a Woodfolk lab member and graduate student in the Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology program, presented at the 2015 AAAAI meeting, at a poster session and at a late-breaking oral abstracts session. Lyndsey was also an invited speaker at the Fluidigm CyTOF Interest Group Meeting hosted by the UVA Flow Cytometry Core last December. In addition, her poster (co-authored with other lab members) presented at the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry conference in Glasgow, Scotland (June 2015) was one of ten winners of an “Outstanding Poster” award.
• Dr. Woodfolk is an invited speaker at the Tenth Symposium on Specific Allergy in Rome, Italy, in fall 2015.

Publications

• Wisniewski JA, Commins SP, Agrawal R, Hulse KE, Yu MD, Cronin J, Heymann PW, Pomes A, Platts-Mills TA, Workman L, Woodfolk JA. Analysis of cytokine production by peanut-reactive T cells identifies residual Th2 effectors in highly allergic children who received peanut oral immunotherapy. Clinical & Experimental Allergy. 2015 (in press).
• Agrawal R, Wisniewski J, Yu MD, Kennedy JL, Platts-Mills T, Heymann PW, Woodfolk JA. Infection with human rhinovirus 16 promotes enhanced IgE responsiveness in basophils of atopic asthmatics. Clinical & Experimental Allergy 2014;44(10):1266-73. doi: 10.1111/cea.12390.
• Agrawal R, Woodfolk JA. Skin barrier defects in atopic dermatitis. Current Allergy & Asthma Reports. 2014;14(5):433. doi: 10.1007/s11882-014-0433-9.
• Romeo MJ, Agrawal R, Pomés A, Woodfolk JA. A molecular perspective on TH2-promoting cytokine receptors in patients with allergic disease. Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology. 2014;133(4):952-60. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2013.08.006.

Grants

• NIH/NIAID (1 R01 AI108626) – The Differentiation and Function of CD4+ Th2 Cells During Allergen-Induced Asthma. J. Woodfolk, Consortium PI (02/01/14-01/31/19)
• NIH 5 R01 AI020565 – Dust Mite, Cockroach and Cat Allergens in Asthma (Administrative supplement). PI: T. Platts-Mills (07/01/15-04/30/18). Role: PI on administrative supplement project. Objective: To perform exploratory mass cytometry studies on leftover PBMC specimens obtained from asthmatic and non-asthmatic subjects experimentally inoculated with rhinovirus.
• UVA School of Medicine – Transformative Collaborative Science Pilot Grant: High-Dimensional Immune Profiling of Diverse Inflammatory Diseases Using Mass Cytometry. L. Erickson, J. Woodfolk, C. McNamara (1/01/15-12/31/15). Objective is to develop a single immune monitoring panel of probes to analyze human T and B cell responses by mass cytometry, and apply this panel to models of experimental rhinovirus infection, food allergy, and obesity induced metabolic dysregulation as proof-of-concept.

Awards to Lab Members

• Lyndsey Muehling, MS,  received an Outstanding Poster award for “Use of mass cytometry to identify circulating T cell populations involved in pathogenic responses to human rhinovirus,” at the 30^th Congress of the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry (Glasgow, Scotland; June 2015).  Collaborators: C. Wogsland, R. Agrawal, P. Heymann, JM Irish, J. Woodfolk.
• Lyndsey also received an award in the category of “Best Poster – Graduate Student” at UVA Department of Medicine’s Carey-Marshall-Thorner Research & Scholars Day (May 2015), for her poster, “Circulating Rhino-virus-specific CD4+ T Cells in uninfected subjects recognize conserved epitopes (Muehling L, Mai D, Kwok W, Agrawal R, Wright P, Woodfolk J)
• Jacob Eccles, lab member and student in UVA’s Medical Scientist Training Program, received a predoctoral fellowship award from the UVA Carter Immunology Center (from its National Institutes of Health-funded immunology training grant).

In addition to her research work, Dr. Woodfolk helped support Dean Dunlap’s School of Medicine Strategic Planning initiative in 2014, as co-chair of the Research Mission Work Group and co-chair of the Research Advisory Committee. Dr. Woodfolk has also served as a reviewer for both the NIH/NIAID and the Wellcome Trust, and serves on a number of editorial boards, most recently joining the board of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical and Immunology.