Studying how inflammation drives memory formation in human barrier tissues

Our research

Understanding the principles of how inflammation drives memory formation in human barrier tissues in order to program and re-program them in human disease

We are developing an interdisciplinary training environment composed of immunologists, engineers, computational biologists, and others that harnesses emerging techniques to answer fundamental questions of biological and clinical relevance in barrier tissue biology. We use a variety of techniques such as single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq), organoid models, epigenetic profiling, flow cytometry, and microscopy in an effort to answer pressing questions surrounding human health and disease. The fundamental questions we try to answer through our work in the lab are:
Which cellular compartments harbor memories of inflammation in tissue, and how might we develop effective mechanisms by which to promote or erase them? In short, where are health and disease stored in a tissue?

Our team
Jose
Jose Ordovas-Montanes (PI)
Sam
Sam Kazer
Peter
Peter Lotfy
Andrew
Andrew Kwong
Josh
Joshua De Sousa Casal
Jaclyn
Jaclyn Long
Kyle
Kyle Kimler
Faith
Faith Taliaferro
Chelsea
Chelsea Asare
Amanda
Amanda Frischmann
Lillian
Lillian Juttukonda
Marc
Marc Elosua-Bayes
Isabelle
Isabelle Oliver

We are located in the Enders Building of Boston Children’s Hospital in the Longwood Medical Area. We’re always looking to grow our team!

Selected publications

Allergic inflammatory memory in human respiratory epithelial progenitor cells. Ordovas-Montanes et al. Nature (2018)

Intra-and inter-cellular rewiring of the human colon during ulcerative colitis. Smillie et al. Cell (2019)
SARS-CoV-2 Receptor ACE2 Is an Interferon-Stimulated Gene in Human Airway Epithelial Cells and Is Detected in Specific Cell Subsets across Tissues.
Ziegler et al. Cell (2020)
Are we there yet? An immune field trip through human embryonic development. Niederlova et al. Immunity (2022)
News

Jaclyn and Josh selected to deliver talks at FOCIS and WIRM!
April 2023
PhD candidates in the lab, Jaclyn and Josh, were recently selected to give talks at Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies 2023 here in Boston, MA and the World Immune Regulation Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, respectively. We are so proud of them and look forward to JOM conference representation by all over the next few months!

Chelsea is awarded NIH/NHLBI grant funding!
August 2023
Research assistant Chelsea was awarded an NIH Diversity Supplement grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to support her work in the lab! Way to go, (future) Dr. Asare!

The Boston Children's Hospital Cell Discovery Network is live!
October 2023
The Cell Discovery Network here at Boston Children's Hospital is now live! The Cell Discovery network is a new collaborative initiative that aims to help drive transformative cures for pediatric disease by listening carefully to each cell in every child using single-cell science. Read more about the Cell Discovery Network here.

Affiliations