Speaker

The Josefowicz lab studies epigenetic regulation of immunity. Dr. Josefowicz's training and expertise in chromatin biochemistry (postdoc, C. David Allis) and immunology (PhD, Alexander Rudensky) enables the study of fundamental principles of epigenetic processes broadly relevant to immunity and health. By leveraging models of immunity and inflammation, and chromatin biochemistry and epigenomics methods, the lab's research spans biophysical mechanisms and human disease relevance. The lab has demonstrated dedicated epigenetic mechanisms that are selectively employed to augment inflammatory gene transcription (Armache et al. Nature. 2020) and also revealed that durable epigenetic memory of inflammation is encoded within human and mouse hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) with functional consequences for Long COVID and general anti-viral defence (Cheong et al. Cell. 2023; Lercher et al. Immunity. 2024). Further, Dr. Josefowicz and colleagues have discovered that similar mechanisms can be coopted for HSC-encoded and transplantable innate immune memory that augments anti-tumor immunity (Daman et al. Cancer Cell. 2025). With these and other studies the lab has established itself as a leader in epigenetic regulation of immunity, with specialization in the fields of epigenetic regulation of transcription and innate immune memory (or “trained immunity”). Ongoing work in the lab is focused on inflammatory reprogramming of HSPC and epigenetic mechanisms of altered hematopoiesis and myeloid cell function, including the function of histone variants and modifications, and the tuning of these pathways to augment anti-tumor immunity.

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