FCE Director
Yale University School of Medicine
About Carrie L. Lucas, PhD
Career path
How did you first get involved in immunology?
I’m happy to be here with you today. Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated with biology and how our bodies work, how it relates to health. I found my way to research while in college and took an advanced course in immunology that I really loved, and that inspired me to stick with that field. It’s just fascinating to me how it touches on human health in so many different ways. Then from that point forward, I’ve stuck with immunology and continue to push forward those types of research goals.
Tell us about the research you’re most proud of.
It’s hard to pick one piece of research, but I’m really most proud of the collective impact of my team and our many collaborators. We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with many people in our research. We start with patients, usually children who suffer from severe immune disorders, and we test the hypothesis that they could be sick from a single gene mutation. We’re looking for monogenic diseases. We get to collaborate with clinical colleagues who refer these patients to us and help us understand what they’re suffering from so we can make sense of the genetics and find that needle in a haystack. Then we do mechanistic research to understand why this mutation might lead to their illness. In terms of being proud of the impact, we really love that we can glean both very basic science insights and translationally relevant insights that have helped the care of these patients and even other types of patients with more common immune-related diseases. We’ve discovered several of these new genetic diseases, and some have advanced to having new therapies based on that new genetic understanding. So, I am very proud of that patient impact.
What advice would you give to young researchers just starting out in the field?
A key thing I always tell young researchers is to remember to prioritize, kind of kindling the fire in your belly, is how I word it, to find and grow you passion, because science is hard. There are a lot of ups and downs, and you want to pursue what you’re excited about and that will help you build resilience. Nothing ever really follows that straight path that we think it will when we start off. I would just advise them to embrace the ride, be bold, collaborate with people, stay open-minded and make time to read and talk with people about the science that excites you most.
Work with FOCIS and FCE's
Switching gears, how did you first get involved with FOCIS?
I was introduced to FOCIS as a graduate student, since the lab that I trained in, the lab of Dr. Megan Sykes, who’s highly involved in FOCIS, was always participating in FOCIS-related events. My passion in immunology started with human relevance and FOCIS is the place where you can really get that kind of exposure. It aligned perfectly with my interests. I started to go to the annual meetings as an early trainee. That was always a highlight. I was in awe of all the amazing kinds of research, and again, the ways the immune system touches on human health. So, fast forwarding now to me as a faculty member, I’ve been fortunate to continue to go to the annual meetings and I have also been able to participate in other things with FOCIS, including teaching the Advanced Course for several years, and serving on committees, including the Education Committee and the Program Committee. That first involvement was based on a scientific interest that’s grown into more advanced involvement with the society.
How do you think FOCIS has changed your world?
FOCIS has been a fabulous opportunity, through annual meetings and just like-minded people working together on the various committees. It’s an opportunity to network and talk with people who are also passionate about bridging between some of the fundamental concepts in immunology and translational human relevance. It’s changed my world through these collaborations. Lots of things we do now, I never would’ve thought we’d do. It was really because of these serendipitous interactions that sparked this interest in new collaborations. I’ve also really been grateful for the platform that FOCIS offers for me to help try to promote and advance trainees who work on our team. I nominate my trainees to advance their careers, encourage them to do the FOCIS events and network with people themselves. It’s been instrumental for my lab.
If your colleague asked you why they should join FOCIS, what would you tell them?
I would tell them FOCIS is a place that aligns really beautifully with the future of immunology. So, I have lots of colleagues who are very basic science immunology, others who are very clinical and FOCIS is the place that allows these sorts of intersections to happen. It celebrates all the disease modeling, human studies, and translational work. And right now, it’s such an exciting time in science in terms of the technologies, the advanced omics approaches, all the single cell data we’re able to generate, computational and AI-related things. These are all converging. It’s an exciting time to think about those intersections and the FOCIS Annual Meeting is a great place where people talk to one another across these spaces. It’s a huge advantage to be part of FOCIS.
We’re going to talk a little bit now about your FCE. Can you tell us about the research that you’re doing?
My lab focuses primarily on monogenic human diseases, pediatric immune responses. We’re trying to learn from these experiments of nature where we’re not focused on a specific gene or pathway up front but rather letting unbiased genetic sequencing teach us from these patients who present to our clinical colleagues, which sort of genes and pathways in the immune system are critical for immune health. We’re really passionate about that area. Then we’ll make animal models using CRISPR technology to do mechanistic studies. But I also want to highlight that the Yale FCE is a broad community, so it’s obviously not just my research. I want to emphasize what an amazing environment Yale and the Yale FCE is. There are people here spanning all clinical specialties, thinking about how immunobiology intersects with that and across Yale University schools and departments.
We benefit from many of these synergies. Our FCE, in particular, has its foundation in a program here at Yale called the Human and Translational Immunology Program, which Kevin Herold and I now direct. It was started initially by Jordan Pober and many contributions from lots of people, including David Hafler. We’ve got other centers that really fit with FOCIS-related themes. Being an FCE is sort of a perfect fit, to emphasize and facilitate collaborations across those centers. One other I’ll highlight is the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale, which Joe Craft runs. I’m really grateful to all our senior colleagues who have fostered an environment here, one that aligns so closely with FOCIS. The FCE was a natural next step to collaborate not only within Yale, but also across other FCEs and this international network that exists.
What are the specific goals that you have as an FCE director?
Kevin Herold and I are both directors of the FOCIS Center of Excellence here, and we spend a lot of time thinking about that question. Where’s the future headed? How do we position ourselves to advance human and translational immunology as best we can? We’re putting a lot of emphasis on collaborative research and synergies, trying to think about ways we can connect people who work on similar things, but maybe from different angles and get them talking to one another and thinking about how they can align and team up on advancing the science at an accelerated pace and in ways you might not predict until you put those people together to collaborate. I mentioned a few of the centers and colleagues within Yale who already do a lot of collaboration, but there are across FCEs also several types of collaborations. I can think of a few, like with UCSF and UPenn, University of Cambridge, there are a fair number of collaborations. Our vision is to continue to foster that and specifically try to advance collaborative research.
What are your biggest challenges?
This is a very challenging time in biomedical research. With the climate in the academic research sector, there’s a lot of uncertainty regarding NIH support. There’s a rapidly changing landscape that represents hurdles for people trying to collaborate and advance. It makes it increasingly important for us to work together. That’s why we have our vision of investing in collaborative research. We’re continuing to try to support trainees and foster the pipeline in translational immunology by communicating to our trainees that this is an important path and can really lead to lifesaving treatments for patients. It has and will continue to do so. The challenge that we all face is how do we stay positive, make the most of what we have, and continue to advance the work. It’s such an exciting time from the omics perspective and with all the advancing technologies in science we’re poised to make major breakthroughs. So, for the uncertainty to hit at this time is a big challenge. That’s what we’re currently facing.
Why did you apply to be an FCE?
I was very fortunate when I came to Yale that Jordan Pober was at the helm of the Human and Translational Immunology Program and had supported Yale becoming an FCE, together with help from David Hafler. That infrastructure was already there. Then Kevin Herold and I took over the leadership of the Human and Translational Immunology Program and we are eager to continue to participate in the FCE. We love that it offers these bridges for international collaboration, people with like-minded views, valuing human and translational work, and supporting trainees – especially at times when funding can be difficult – to participate in the FOCIS Annual Meeting, which is so important. For all those reasons, the FCE aligns naturally with our goals.
Those are all the questions for today, thank you for your time.