Joel Ernst, MD
My lab focuses on immunity to tuberculosis, to inform the rational design and development of new TB vaccines. Our work includes basic studies of mechanisms of immunity and immune evasion in TB, using mouse models. In addition, we study human immunity to TB, and discovered that in contrast to pathogens that employ antigenic variation to evade immunity and cause persistent infection, the human T cell antigens and epitopes of M. tuberculosis are highly conserved, even in strains that diverged from a common ancestor thousands of years ago. More recently, we have identified rare antigens of M. tuberculosis that show evidence of diversifying selection, and have initiated studies to test the hypothesis that T cell responses to those antigens are associated with superior protective immunity compared with T cell responses to conserved antigens. Our work on human immunity to TB spans multiple continents, and involves numerous collaborators at UCSF, and at other U.S. and international sites and institutions.
Ernst lab: https://experimentalmedicine.ucsf.edu/laboratories/ernst-lab
UCSF Center for Tuberculosis Leadership:
UC TRAC Core Management Committee Member