Renowned Immunologists Join Medical Center

Husband - Wife Team Brings One Dozen Scientists to Rochester to Further Inflammation, B-cell and T-cell Biology Research

Husband-and-wife scientists who are reshaping the frontiers of immunology are among the first high-profile recruits to join the Medical Center as part of the new strategic plan.

Frances Lund, Ph.D., and Troy Randall, Ph.D., are in the midst of moving their laboratories from the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake to the Medical Center. The two have accepted appointments as professors of Medicine in the Division of Allergy/Immunology and Rheumatology, with additional appointments in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Their work fits in squarely with the Immunology and Infectious Disease portion of the strategic plan, and also touches upon several additional areas in the plan – cancer, stem cells, and orthopaedics.

Lund and Randall are bringing with them about a dozen scientists, including post-doctoral associates and technicians, who are also making the move from Trudeau to Rochester. The groups are currently setting up new laboratories in the new James P. Wilmot Cancer Center building. The move should be completed by the end of August, with time until then divided between Rochester, the Trudeau Institute, and scientific meetings.

The two immunologists, who met as graduate students in the laboratory of Ronald Corley at Duke, study a variety of areas that have deep routes at the Medical Center. Their work focuses on topics like inflammation and basic B-cell and T-cell biology. Combined, their research touches upon conditions such as flu, bird flu, and other infections; respiratory ailments like asthma; and autoimmune diseases like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes.

“Drs. Lund and Randall are outstanding and well-respected immunologists with the rare ability to move science through all the paces of translational research, including unraveling basic functions, testing them in disease, and generating pre-clinical models to ultimately gain insights into human disease,” said Iñaki Sanz, M.D., head of the Immunology and Infectious Disease portion of the strategic plan and chief of the Division of Allergy/Immunology and Rheumatology within the Department of Medicine. “They will greatly enhance our ability to study a number of human autoimmune and infectious diseases, and we are very fortunate that they have chosen the University as their new home.”

Their extensive research programs in flu extend the Medical Center’s extensive expertise in a disease that kills approximately 30,000 Americans every year. Last year the National Institutes of Health awarded the University $26 million to establish the New York Influenza Center of Excellence to learn more about flu and increase the odds of avoiding a dangerous pandemic caused by bird flu or another dangerous type of flu. The center is headed by David Topham, Ph.D., a leading authority on how our immune system responds to flu, and John Treanor, M.D., who has helped protect people worldwide against flu through the testing of new flu vaccines. University researchers in recent years have taken part in virtually every broad effort by our nation to bolster our defenses against the flu, from testing new vaccines in a pinch to increase supply, to investigating new ways to supply vaccine quickly should a pandemic occur.

Lund and Randall bring with them a great deal of funding, including a combination of five RO1 grants from the National Institutes of Health as well as funding from biotech and pharmaceutical companies. They’ve been at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, about 100 miles north of Syracuse, since 1997. They’ve also served as adjunct faculty members at the University of Vermont and Albany Medical College.

“We may be the only people whose move to Rochester includes a move to a warmer climate,” joked Randall.

Researchers with whom the couple is discussing collaborations include Sanz, Topham and Treanor; rheumatologists R. John Looney, M.D. and Jennifer Anolik, M.D., Ph.D.; Eddie Schwarz, Ph.D., professor of orthopaedics; and Steve Georas, M.D., chair of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care. In the cancer realm, Lund plans to explore how inflammation can be enhanced to respond to and fight off tumors and metastases, and Randall will look at the effects of lymph node-like structures on tumors.