Pioneer in B Cells Joins Faculty

Frances Lund, Ph.D., whose work on B cells is reshaping the frontiers of immunology, has joined the Medical Center as a professor in the Division of Allergy/Immunology and Rheumatology of the Department of Medicine, with a secondary appointment as professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Her work fits in squarely with the Immunology and Infectious Disease IDP of the Strategic Plan, and also touches upon additional Strategic Plan IDPs and ISPs, including cancer, stem cells and musculoskeletal.

Lund, along with her husband, Troy Randall, Ph.D., and about one dozen scientists, are joining the Medical Center from the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, where she has been since 1997. She received her undergraduate degree in microbiology at the University of Notre Dame, and her doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Duke University. While at Duke, she also completed pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training in the labs of Dr. Ronald Corley. She also finished a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Maureen Howard at the Palo Alto-based DNAX Research Institute.

In addition to her work at Trudeau, Lund also served as an adjunct associate professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the Albany Medical College, and as an adjunct associate professor of Medicine at the University of Vermont. She is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A widely sought lecturer nationally and internationally, Lund has published more than 70 articles and studies. She presently serves as associate editor for the Journal of Immunology. Click here to review complete CV.

Lund is widely known for her work showing that B cells, a key portion of the immune system, do much more than previously thought. While scientists have long recognized that B cells make antibodies that help tag invaders like microbes for destruction, Lund demonstrated that B cells also make cytokines, the chemical signaling molecules responsible for much of the messaging that goes on between immune cells. Lund is an expert in sorting out the types of cytokines that B cells make, how they help protect people against infection, their role in infections like strep and tuberculosis, and their role in several autoimmune diseases.

“Right now, B cell depletion therapy is being tried for several autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and diabetes,” said Lund. “But we’re finding that B cells do a lot of things, and with this new understanding, it might be possible to better target potential therapies and develop better treatments.”

Lund is also an expert on the chemical signals that determine how and when inflammatory cells go to sites of infection and tissue damage. She discovered a master regulator of signaling molecules known as chemokines. While researchers around the world are focusing on the effects of knocking out specific chemokines, such as RANTES or MCP-1, Lund is looking at the possibility of targeting the master regulator, CD38, to control several chemokines simultaneously. This molecule plays a key role in regulating the trafficking of immune cells like neutrophils, monocytes, and dendritic cells to sites of inflammation and infection. The work is relevant to a broad array of infections and autoimmune diseases, as well as to the medical issues faced by transplant patients.

Understanding the inflammatory process is crucial to fighting bird flu, another interest of Lund’s. Bird flu is a quick killer whose victims can die within 24 hours, apparently because the lungs simply become swamped with immune cells like macrophages, monocytes and neutrophils that are trying to fend off the infection. Understanding what guides such cells to make such a vigorous early response could help scientists like Lund make the infection a bit less deadly. She has discovered, for instance, that the lungs maintain a reservoir of memory B cells that keep an organism primed to fight off the flu, an unexpected finding that could help shape a future flu vaccine.

Lund and her group are currently setting up their laboratories in the new James P. Wilmot Cancer Center building.