Assistant Professor
Department of Immunology
Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine
Yokohama City, Japan
Dr. Ban received his Ph.D. in 2012 from the University of Tokyo, Japan under the mentorship of Prof. Tadatsugu Taniguchi. During his Ph.D. course, he studied the innate immune sensing mechanisms of nucleic acids derived from viruses or other pathogens, and contributed to publishing two Nature papers and three Proc Natl Acad Sci USApapers. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Ban joined the laboratory of Prof. Tomohiko Tamura at the Department of Immunology, Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, and has been studying the activation mechanism of the IRF transcription factor family, and developing novel therapeutics for autoimmune diseases. He showed in a mouse model of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) that hyperactivation of IRF5 causes the development of an SLE-like disease, and that the selective suppression of IRF5 is key to the new therapeutics for SLE. His work was published in Immunity in 2016. He recently works on a project for the development of the IRF5 inhibitor as an innovative drug for SLE.
Dr. Rathinam received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Madras Veterinary College, India and PhD from Michigan State University in 2009.
Dr. Sonnenberg completed his doctoral research training at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine in 2011, focusing on mucosal immunology.
