October – 2021
#theonlylabever is grateful to receive generous funding by the J.P. Bickell Foundation. The awarded Medical Research Grant will support investigations into how the microbiota remote regulates tissue immunity and susceptibility to diseases in extra-intestinal organs. Thank you very much for the support and believe in our vision!
September – 2021
Congratulations to Pailin, Ling Ling and Louis for publishing a exceptionally wonderful review article on Macrophages and their non-immune functions in the intestinal tract. Download it here for free: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MACROPHAGES AND WHY THEY ARE COOL.
August – 2021
We like to welcome three new fearless undergraduate students in the lab.
Vicky Xie (IMM385Y student) – investigating the antibody response to the gut microbiota
Joanna Han (IMM385Y student) – development new culture methods for intestinal protozoa
Deanna Kim (IMM450Y student) – characterizing ILC2 niches in vitro
June/July – 2021
SARS-CoV2 continues to be a major downer.
May – 2021
Faustina and Helen get their abstracts accepted and give awesome presentations of their 4th year research results at the 12th annual Ontario-Québec Undergraduate Immunology Conference. Very proud to see their progress in exploring new mechanisms innate
May -2021
Louis Ngai receives a NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships – Doctoral (PGS D) program award. Congratulations, Louis! Great job!!
April -2021
Faustina, Helen and Noor successfully finish their 4th year research projects.
April -2021
Congratulations to Victoria Tran and Noor Alsmadi, both Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program students, for receiving a University of Toronto Excellence Award in Natural Sciences & Engineering and an Immunology Summer Student Research Program Award. Looking forward starting seeing some cool science.
March – 2021
Ling Ling’s research on a personalized approach towards an improvement of Crohn’s Disease is honored by a Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS-M) award. Congratulations!!
August -2020
A warm welcome to Helen Liang and Noor Alsmadi. Both are joining the lab as 4th year undergraduate students in the Department’s IMM450Y program. Looking forward investigating antibody responses against gut commensals and the impact of metabolites on macrophage function with you.
Congrats to Faustina Lau for getting accepted into the HMB496 program to identify new regulators of ILC3 activity.
July -2020
Ling Ling receives the Dr. Edward KETCHUM Graduate Student Scholarships. Congratulations!!
Congratulations to Louis for receiving an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). Excellent, Louis!
June -2020
Ling Ling’s abstract gets accepted to the FOCIS 2020 conference and earns her a School of Graduate Studies travel award! Fantastic job, Ling Ling.
May -2020
Ling Ling and Ayushi successfully defend their Applied Master in Immunology projects. Congratulations!!!
Annie, Faustina and David finish their 4th year undergraduate research projects in the laboratory. Amazing new data and insight into host-microbiome interactions and wonderful progress in generating new in vitro tools to study ILC2s.
April -2020
Pailin receives a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) awarded by the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Outstanding!!!
March -2020
Kyle receives a prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. BAM, Kyle – way to go!!!
February -2020
Kyle and Pailin both receive travel awards to the Annual Meeting by Canadian Society for Immunology. However, COVID-19 intercepted their travel plans.
January -2020
Two new publications from #theonlylabever out in Methods in Enzymology. Here Pailin, Kyle and Louis share our protocols to isolate and work with mucosal innate immune cells. We very much hope these manuscripts will be of help to everyone aiming to dive into the world of gut ILC, DCs and macrophages.
December -2019
Congratulations to Faustina Lau for getting her abstract accepted for oral presentation at the ASSU Undergraduate Research Conference 2020. Watch out for some exciting microbiota data!
November -2019
Warmest welcome to Jasmine and Helen
October -2019
Please see our latest Focus article on how the day and night light cycles regulates ILC3 homeostasis and function in the gut. Pretty impressive oscillating regulation of ILC3 gene expression by clock genes. Find the original article we are featuring at Science Immunology
September -2019
New review article out by Kyle Burrows, Louis Ngai, Flora Wong and David Won.
Here we summarize our current understanding of how ILC2 and gut protists interact to sustain tissue and immune balance. Check it out! It’s free. click HERE
August -2019
The Mortha lab welcomes 3 new IMM450Y students in the lab.
Annie Zhou
Faustina Lau
David Won
Let’s kick it!
May -2019
Congratulations to Pailin Chiaranunt for successfully passing her reclassification exam. Another PhD warrior in the lab ready to tackle gut macrophage heterogeneity.
A warm welcome to Annie Zhou, joining the laboratory with UROP fellowship to study the antibody responses against diverse microbiota.
April -2019
The Mortha lab and the Gommerman lab are happy host Maryam Ghaedi from Fumio Takei’s laboratory at UBC for a special immunology seminar.
Maryam Ghaedi
Fumio Takei’s laboratory UBC Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Center
April 10th, 2019
MSB 2173
Title: “Single cell analysis of RORa lineage tracer mice reveals functional heterogeneity of lung ILC2s”
Some exciting new ILC2 data ahead. Be there!
Congrats to Annie Zhou, a 3rd year undergraduate student in the 2019 Immunology Summer Student Research Program, for receiving an UROP-award. Looking forward to run some exciting experiments.
March -2019
We are welcoming Joyce Zhu as new research volunteer in the lab!
January -2019
We are happy to advertise our contribution to another great resource data set. The Cis-Regulatory Atlas of the mouse immune system is now available here. Full paper available here.
The Mortha lab is proud to be part of a fantastic collaboration with the Faith lab at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Here we contributed to demonstrate that colonization of germ-free mice with human microbiota from IBD patients shows an increased susceptibility towards this disease. This proofs that humanization of mice with fecal patient material renders a useful method to identify roles for the microbiome in pathology. Read the full manuscript here.
December -2018
We are happy to kick off the new year with presenting our latest efforts to understand the impact of the gut microbiome on immune-related diseases. Here are our humble contributions to a very conceptional observation by the Gommerman lab, demonstrating that the protozoan commensal Trichomonas musculis elicits protective immunity towards multiple sclerosis. Congrats Eric, Pailin and Kyle! Enjoy the full manuscript here: IMPACT
The Mortha lab welcomes three new members: Ksenia Meteleva, Olivia Li and Lotus Xie. These three undergraduate volunteers will join our team in January and take on some new projects supporting our research program on mucosal myeloid cells and innate lymphoid cells. Exciting new data ahead!
October -2018
The Mortha lab happily presents the fruits of a very productive collaboration with the Hidalgo lab. In this article we collectively demonstrate that tissue-infiltrating Neutrophils are locally recycled by macrophages and able to modulate the transcriptional profile of the tissue to impact homeostasis and physiology. Enjoy the full text at the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Another proud contribution advancing our understanding of ILCs. Here, in collaboration with the Carlyle and Makrigiannis labs we contribute to the analysis of the inhibitory NK cell receptor NKR-P1B on ILCs. Read the full text in Cellular and Molecular Immunology.
August -2018
We are happy to welcome Ayushi Tahkur and Bella Lim as IMM450Y students to the team. Both will expand their projects towards the imaging of host-microbiome interactions in the mucosa and the integration of microbial signals into innate immune functions.
June -2018
Dr. Mortha wins the Bhagirath Singh Early Career Award in Infection and Immunity 2017.
June -2018
New research paper with contributions from Eric and Kyle in the Mortha lab published in Science Signalling showing a critical role for the ion channel TRPM7 in B cell development. Congrats boys!
May -2018
Dr. Mortha is thankful for being awarded the Canada Research Chair in Mucosal Immunology. Read more about our plans here!
May -2018
The Mortha laboratory welcomes, Carla Cárdenas Ayala from the University Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) as a Mitacs fellow for the summer. More protozoan projects starting soon. Bienvenido, Carla!
May -2018
We are happy to have Flora Wong (IMM450Y student) joining the laboratory as Master student in the Applied Master’s in Immunology program this summer. Cool projects on gene editing innate immune pathways. Knock those genes out, Flora!
May -2018
It is time to say farewell to Mona Wang (IMM450Y student), Sarah Grech (undergraduate research volunteer) and Amna Majeed (undergraduate research volunteer). Amna will leave to explore Med-school, Sarah will join the Kaul lab as a summer research student at UofT/Immunology to explore the genital mucosal immune system. Mona will join the Department of Molecular Genetics at UofT as PhD student in the fall. All the best of luck for all your future projects, may your pipetting thumbs be strong and your positive control positive.
April -2018
Congratulations to Bella and Ayushi for both receiving UROP-fellowships for their summer research projects in the lab. Good job!!!
April -2018
Congratulations to Mona and Flora for getting both their abstracts accepted for oral presentation at the Ontario/Quebec Undergraduate Immunology Conference 2018. Looking forward to hear some exciting presentations.
April -2018
We are welcoming Soomin Lee as a new research volunteer in the lab. Perfect gels and consistent results, guaranteed.
March -2018
The Mortha lab welcomes David Won as a new undergraduate research volunteer in the laboratory. Exciting project on new tools to study innate lymphoid cells ex vivo.
February -2018
The Mortha lab is proud to announce its first publication in the NK and Innate Lymphoid Cell section of Frontiers in Immunology. We are discussing the mechanisms and physiological implications of cytokine networks between myeloid cells and ILC. We hope you will enjoy the read and make use of the freely available manuscript at: a free insight into ILCs and myeloid cells
January -2018
We are grateful to the Canadian Institute for Heath Research for 5 years of support within their Project Grant scheme to allow us to investigate the compartmentalized crosstalk of ILCs and myeloid cells at mucosal barrier surfaces. Special thanks goes to all reviewer and panelists for investing their time and scientific enthusiasm into CIHR to ensure a fair and transparent reviewing process.
January -2018
The Mortha lab welcomes Sarah Grech as new undergraduate researcher.
January -2018
New research paper with contributions from the Mortha lab published in Nature Communications identifies a key role for tissue-resident Macrophages in early breast cancer cell dissemination.
January -2018
Congratulations to Mona Wong (IMM450Y student) for getting selected for presenting her abstract on genetic engineering of cytokines for Crohn’s Disaease on stage at the Art’s & Science Student’s Union Undergraduate Conference 2018. Go Mona!
December -2017
The Mortha laboratory welcomes Pailin Chiaranunt from Timothy Hand‘s laboratory as new graduate student with support from the Ontario Trillium Scholarships by the Canadian Government. Pailin’s projects will focus on spatial high-resolution analysis of host-microbiome interactions.
November -2017
We are happy to welcome Ayushi Tahkur and Bella Lim as new undergrad researchers to the team. More cloning and some exciting histology projects are about to happen.
September -2017
The Mortha Lab welcomes Dr. Kyle Burrows from the Zaph lab at UBC Vancouver as a new member of our team. Kyle’s projects aim to understand ILC diversity and the crosstalk of myeloid cells and ILCs at mucosal surfaces.
September -2017
New research paper published in Nature Genetics identifies regulatory networks of IBD with contributions from the Mortha laboratory.
July -2017
Congrats to Mona for the great presentation of her Undergraduate Research Opportunity Prize (UROP)-supported work on genetically engineering biologicals for the improvement of IBD. Good job!
July -2017
We are happy to announce the special seminar of Monica Romera Hernandez from the Cupedo lab at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam on:
“The role of RORgt+ ILC3 on intestinal tissue regeneration”
Monday July 17, 2017
11:00 a.m.
Rm. 7231 MSB
1 King’s College Circle
Please, contact me for additional information.
July – 2017
The Mortha lab welcomes Mona Wang and Flora Wong as first IMM450Y students. Exciting projects on personalized medicine and new gene targeting approaches.
MAY – 2017
The Mortha laboratory is happy to announce support from the New Researcher Fund by the Connaught Fundation. http://connaught.research.utoronto.ca/ #happyscientists
MAY – 2017
Welcome Kyle Burrows from the Zaph Lab at the University of British Columbia. First post-doctoral fellow joining the Mortha lab. Kicking of projects about new ILC subsets and new immunmodulatory mechanisms.
MARCH – 2017
Welcome Mona Wang as first Summer Research Project student, starting an exciting project with a lot translational potential for Crohn’s Disease patients.
Welcome Amna Majeed as new Undergrad researcher enforcing the lab with cloning and PCR skills.
FEBRUARY – 2017
Dr. Mortha receives the prestigious CSI New Investigator Travel Award from the Canadian Society of Immunology. Thank you very much!
DECEMBER – 2016
Welcome Flora Wong as first Undergrad researcher in the Mortha Lab.
NOVEMBER – 2016
Welcome Eric Cao to the team! Looking forward to explore the interactions of host immune system and commensal protozoa.
NOVEMBER – 2016 until JULY – 2017
Knock out strains are imported
Animal protocols got approved
First major pieces of equipment arrived
MORTHA LABORATORY 