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When the Body's Own Defense Network Turns Against Itself
The immune system is one of the most tightly interconnected networks in the body. In autoimmune disease, that network malfunctions — the immune system attacks the body's own tissue. This pathway trains you to map immune signaling as a network, and to understand why autoimmune conditions so often cluster together in the same patients.
Mapping a System That Attacks Itself
Conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and type 1 diabetes look very different on the surface, but they share a common thread: network-level immune dysregulation rather than a single clear-cut cause.
— Map how immune signaling molecules (cytokines) interact as a network, and how that network becomes dysregulated
— Build comorbidity networks showing which conditions tend to occur together in a given autoimmune disease
— Use large genetic association datasets to identify shared risk factors across autoimmune conditions
— Study how existing biologic drugs, which target specific immune molecules, map onto the disrupted network
Why It Matters
Recognizing What Often Goes Unrecognized
Autoimmune diseases affect a large share of the population and are frequently under-recognized, misdiagnosed, or diagnosed only after significant tissue damage. Understanding shared network biology across autoimmune conditions helps explain why certain drugs work across multiple diseases, why patients with one autoimmune condition should be screened for others, and where new treatment targets might be hiding in an already partially-understood biological network.
What a Summer Project Looks Like
Autoimmune & Immune-Mediated Disease
Mapping the Comorbidity Network of an Autoimmune Condition
Using de-identified patient registry or public claims-based data, a student builds a comorbidity network centered on a specific autoimmune condition — identifying which other diagnoses occur together with it far more often than chance would predict. They analyze the resulting network to identify clusters of related conditions and investigate whether known immune signaling biology can explain why those conditions co-occur. The project includes a review of relevant genetic association data to check whether shared genetic risk factors are consistent with the comorbidity patterns found, mentored by a rheumatology, immunology, or immune network biology researcher.
Immune signaling biology
Genetic association data
Registry-based methods
Course by Track
How Each Level Gets There
Every track takes a shared Fall foundations course, then this area-specific Spring course, then a live mentored summer project.
High School
HS-S-AI
Undergraduate
UG-S-AI
Medical Student
MS-S-AI
Clinician
CL-S-AI
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