Prof. Jérémie Le Pen awarded DP2 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award
Congratulations to Jérémie Le Pen, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, on receiving a DP2 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award through the NIAID program!
The DP2 program supports early-stage investigators pursuing bold, high-risk, high-reward research with the potential for transformative impact.
The Le Pen Lab strives to understand why common viral infections can cause little harm in most people but can lead to life-threatening or chronic disease in others. The lab investigates cell-intrinsic mechanisms of innate immunity, the body’s first line of defense against infection.
Interferons are among the body’s most powerful natural defenses against viruses, but many questions remain about the diversity of human interferons or how their sequences determine their antiviral and inflammatory effects.
With this award, the Le Pen Lab will investigate the biological rules that govern interferon function: how sequence variation shapes antiviral potency, how different interferon families work together, and whether these principles can be harnessed to engineer safer and more effective antiviral therapies.
Congratulations to Jérémie and the Le Pen Lab!
