Tel Aviv University’s Colton Center for Autoimmunity has announced nine grant-winning research teams for 2024, spanning a broad range of scientific and clinical approaches to autoimmune disease. The awards include development grants of $200,000, Eureka pilot grants of $50,000, and a special emergency grant category introduced following the events of October 7, 2023, to study the relationship between acute stress and autoimmune disease.
The two development grant recipients are pursuing particularly novel platforms: Prof. Ben Maoz is developing a “Mini-Me-on-a-Chip” — a microfluidic organ-on-a-chip system for modeling autoimmune disease — while Dr. Maayan Gal and Dr. Ehud Zigmond are exploring a new class of calcineurin inhibitors as a potential treatment for acute colitis.
The emergency grant awardees are examining how psychological stress interacts with immune function — studying its effects on multiple sclerosis relapse risk and on autoimmune exacerbation more broadly, reflecting a growing area of scientific interest in the mind-body dimensions of immune disease.
The Eureka grants — organized around the themes of Autoimmunity & Ecology and Autoimmunity & Mind — fund projects ranging from extracellular vesicles as biomarkers for lupus, to postpartum Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, to the neurological and psychological dimensions of Crohn’s disease. The interdisciplinary teams draw researchers from TAU, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Bar-Ilan University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science, as well as one collaborator from Yale.
Featured Experts
Katsuo Kurabayashi, PhD
Colton Consortium Member
Department Chair, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Carla R. Nowosad, PhD
Colton Consortium Member
Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine / NYU Langone Health
Jun Wang, PhD
Colton Consortium Member
Associate Professor, Department of Pathology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine / NYU Langone HealthFeatured Projects
Shedding Light on the Invisible: A New Paradigm for Predicting Multiple Sclerosis Disease Progression Using Novel MRI Tools for Probing Pathology in Normal Appearing Tissues
Applying advanced quantitative MRI to detect pathology invisible to current clinical tools, this project builds an AI model to predict MS progression and enable earlier, more personalized diagnosis and treatment.
Novel Tools to Track and Manipulate Immune Cells in Autoimmunity Models
Developing a cell-labeling tool to map immune cell interactions in living tissue, this project identifies the drivers of skin-resident T cell persistence in psoriasis and potential targets for disease prevention.
Related News
What a "Silenced" Chromosome Can Tell Us About Autoimmunity
Penn Colton Center researcher Montserrat Anguera reveals how B cells maintain X chromosome inactivation, and how its breakdown drives lupus, offering new insight into female-biased autoimmune disease and treatment targets.
Yale News Spotlights the Colton Center as a Key Driver of Autoimmune Innovation at Yale Ventures
A Yale News feature on Yale Ventures' five accelerator funds highlights the Colton Center for Autoimmunity's growing role in translating autoimmune research into startups, licenses, and real-world therapies.
Yale Researchers Use Machine Learning Tool to Improve Personalized Immunotherapy Design
A Colton-supported Yale study has produced ImmunoStruct, a machine learning model that improves personalized cancer vaccine design by incorporating the 3D structure of immune-activating peptides — now licensed to a Yale spinout.