The multi-disciplinary Program in Immunology consists of over 100 faculty who identify themselves as basic or clinical immunologists and are members of multiple units at UAB.
UAB is the home of several internationally prominent research programs, e.g., Developmental Immunology, Mucosal Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Division, Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center, Host Defense, Virology and Vaccine Biology. Newer programs in Cancer Immunology, Allergy, Immunogenetics, Inflammation and Tissue Injury, Transplantation Immunology, Neuroimmunology, and Basic Immunology of the T cell and innate systems are poised to become highly competitive.
For a brief history of the Program in Immunology at UAB, written by Dr. Claude Bennett, please click here.
In collaborative studies, James J. Kobie, Ph.D., and Mark R. Walter, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Luis Martinez-Sobrido, Ph.D., of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, discovered a neutralizing monoclonal
antibody that potentially acts as a potent universal coronavirus therapy. 
For just the third time in history, a University of Alabama at Birmingham faculty member, Casey Weaver, MD from the Department of Pathology, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences 
In a study published in the journal Science Immunology, Allan Zajac, Ph.D., and co-first authors Shannon M. Kahan, Ph.D., and Rakesh K. Bakshi, Ph.D., from the Department of Microbiology at UAB, show that two subsets of CD8 T cells develop to provide either short-term or long-term immune protection. The study focuses on one factor that guides this developmental bifurcation — interleukin-2 (IL-2). 
Casey D. Morrow, PhD and Hyunmin Koo, Ph.D. have refined a microbiome “fingerprint” method that tracks sub-strain variants of a single gut microbe strain. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports. 
Beatriz León, Ph.D., and her UAB colleagues unraveled a complex trail for the antagonistic mechanisms of LPS to promote or prevent allergic disease through activation or suppression of T helper-2 immune cells. 
Robert Welner, Ph.D., and Rui Lu, Ph.D., both associate scientists within the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, have received a $3 million Mark Foundation for Cancer Research 2022 Endeavor Award to study the interplay of inflammation and clonal expansion in leukemia. 