Lyndsey Muehling
University of Virginia, VA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
The common cold virus, rhinovirus, usually causes mild symptoms, but in people with allergic asthma it can set off serious asthma attacks. The immune response walks a fine line between protecting the body and damaging it.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
rhinovirus
common cold
respiratory virus infection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Identify pre-existing immune signatures that predict respiratory viral infection severity, using samples from a completed human model of repeated rhinovirus challenge together with a cohort of well-characterized allergic asthma patients.
- Build machine-learning pipelines that integrate high-dimensional immune-monitoring data, including spectral flow cytometry, cytokines and antibodies, with infection outcomes, and track how these features change across repeat infections.
- Use rhinovirus-specific peptide/MHC class II tetramers, reagents that capture T cells recognizing one viral fragment, with single-cell multi-omics to define the resting transcriptional state of rhinovirus-specific CD4+ T cells at the epitope level.
- Test how repeated viral exposure and chronic allergic inflammation remodel these virus-specific CD4+ T cells, comparing healthy challenged volunteers with allergic asthmatic patients.
More about the research
Higher numbers of virus-specific T cells, immune cells that recognize infected cells, are linked to less virus shedding in healthy people but to worse lung function in asthma. Almost nothing is known about how these cells persist over time, how repeated infections change them, or how long-standing allergic inflammation reshapes them. This project proposes that the immune landscape already present before infection, especially anti-viral T cells, determines how well a person is protected when the virus returns.
Why it matters
Rhinovirus is a major health burden and a common trigger of asthma attacks, yet there are no interventions that target protective immunity against it. Identifying the immune features that separate protection from harm could reveal targets for therapies that strengthen helpful anti-viral responses in people with allergic asthma without pushing the immune system toward the damaging responses that worsen lung function.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ellen Robey
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Define the molecular links between different branches of T cell receptor (TCR) signaling and the transcription factor network that specifies the CD4 helper fate, guided by a high-resolution single-cell map of T cell development.
Kathleen Sheehan
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Monitor how specific immunotherapies change patients' immune profiles, using flow cytometry, CyTOF mass cytometry and multiplex functional assays to support clinical trials.
Ashish Sharma
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify features in large-scale omics datasets that are linked to HIV viral rebound and HIV DNA decline, using statistical and bioinformatics analysis of data from all program projects.
The school
University of Virginia: 43 labs on PI Pages, $814M a year on research, 413 research doctorates a year.
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