Jan - Graeme Koelwyn

Event Details

Date/Time:

Thursday, January 16th, 2025 11:00am - 12:30pm PT

Location:

Remote

Join Zoom Meeting https://sfu.zoom.us/j/82777232230?pwd=KDY7saEuetZX9l3XvGZTqpYFQfplrq.1

Meeting ID: 827 7723 2230 Password: 032600

Featured Speaker: Dr. Graeme Koelwyn

Talk Title: Inflammatory memory: using ‘omics tools to illuminate new pathobiology in heart disease

Affiliation:

• SFU, Assistant Professor with the Department of Health Sciences, Canada Research Chair Tier II in Public Health 'Omics in Exercise and Disease

Bio:

Dr. Graeme Koelwyn is the Dr. James Hogg Chair in Public Health ‘Omics in Exercise and Disease at St Paul’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He received his PhD in Pathobiology and Translational Medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in 2019. He then completed his postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He joined SFU and HLI in 2021. The overarching goal of the Koelwyn lab is to apply a translational, ‘omics-based approach for understanding how heart, lung and/or oncologic diseases communicate with each other through immune-specific mechanisms, leading to adverse systemic, tissue, and cellular responses. It also seeks to demonstrate how exercise – a low-cost public health strategy – can therapeutically improve immune function to protect from these diseases and their deleterious interactions.

Abstract:

A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Canada, with over 60,000 Canadians entering emergency rooms annually. The recovery from a heart attack requires a swift and coordinated response from our innate immune system, which responds to inflammatory signals generated by the infarct. Historically, it was believed this immune response, coordinated by monocytes and macrophages to clear debris and heal damaged tissue, had no lasting effect on the immune system. However, recent evidence from our group and others have shown this is not the case. In this talk, I’ll discuss the recently developed concept of inflammatory memory, wherein monocytes and macrophages acquire ‘learned’ behavior following inflammatory events such as a heart attack, via epigenetic modifications, which result in long-term altered responses to subsequent immune challenges. I’ll also discuss the ‘omics tools used to identify heart attack-induced inflammatory memory, and the effect of such memory on future disease risk.

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Trainee Speaker: Rituparna Banerjee

Affiliation: PhD candidate in bioinformatics program jointly supervised by Daniel Coombs and Matthew Pennell

Talk Title: Exploring B cell repertoire evolution post-vaccination using mathematical modelling and phylogenetic trees