Kelsey Voss, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, was recently voted to join the CIC membership. Voss, who came to UVA from a postdoctoral position at Vanderbilt, is an expert in the immune system’s interactions with physiological iron. All cells need iron to function, and imbalances in iron levels in cells can cause illness and cell death. Specifically, the Voss Lab studies the role of iron in autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, Crohn’s, and rheumatoid arthritis. “About half the people with these conditions have anemia,” Voss explained. “We want to understand that dysregulation and how it affects their immune cells, because even though these people are anemic, we’ve found that they still have high levels of iron in their T cells.”
Voss began studying iron in an immunological context after an experiment unexpectedly indicated that it was a key factor in autoimmune disease. “I realized there were lots of observations that no one had connected together, but they all pointed towards iron metabolism,” Voss said. Now, she and her team are working to rigorously establish those connections. One project is establishing the extent of iron dysregulation in patients with autoimmune diseases. By collecting blood samples from patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, and similar conditions, Voss and colleagues are beginning to understand the metabolic diversity at play. In mice, the team is studying differences in iron uptake and metabolism by immune cells in different tissues. In mice with Type 1 diabetes, for example, preventing immune cells from taking up iron provided a survival advantage to T cells whereas in lupus it was disadvantageous. Voss is also developing antibody-based therapies to target iron receptors with the aim to correct iron imbalances and improve patient care. Vaccinating alpacas with a human iron regulation protein the lab studies causes the alpacas to produce antibodies and antibody fragments called nanobodies that can be used as the basis for human medicines. “I want to do bioengineering, to make variations of those antibodies to target different cells in different disease conditions,” says Voss.
Voss is also creating opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to gain experience in research evaluation and writing by expanding a journal review club she built at Vanderbilt University to UVA. Trainees will present and critique non-peer reviewed preprint articles with peers from Boston, Vienna, and Berlin, and will have the opportunity to publish their work in Nature Reviews Immunology. The Voss lab is also expanding, with opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Those interested in participating in the immunology preprint club or joining the lab should contact Voss at xfr5ab@virginia.edu.