Bass Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2024

Unlocking evolutionarily latent immune functions for treating disease

Project Summary/Abstract All animals possess a robust innate immune response that depends on their ability to recognize viral double- stranded RNA (dsRNA) as foreign. Yet, animal cells also encode and express dsRNA, and this cellular dsRNA must be distinguished as “self” to prevent an aberrant immune response. Adenosine deaminases that act on RNA, or ADARs, deaminate dsRNA to mark it as self and prevent an aberrant immune response. In this capacity ADARs serve as an ”Innate Immune Checkpoint” (IIC), and recent studies reveal that a decrease in ADAR activity in tumors releases this IIC, eliciting an immune response that leads to cell death. ADARs are the only IIC known to date, and proposed…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.