Springboard Funding for Gabriel Sollberger

Gabriel will use the funding to study the most abundant human immune cell, the neutrophil. He will use proteomics to identify how these cells use their various effector functions to defend us against infections, but also how these effector functions go awry and harm our own tissue. Gabriel will also work in close collaboration with the Stem Cell Core Facility at SLS to establish iPSC-derived neutrophils as a versatile platform to study this unique immune cell type by genetic alterations.

This research builds upon earlier research published in Science Immunology (Sollberger et al., Chen et al.) in 2018 where Gabriel and colleagues identified a role for a pore-forming protein (gasdermin D) in the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps. The proteomics undertaken in the new award will further study the molecular mechanisms underlying neutrophil effector functions, including neutrophil extracellular traps.