Abstract
The Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS), in partnership with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, enthusiastically congratulate our distinguished recipient of the 2022 annual
This year, Viral Immunology has selected Dr. Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti to receive the Rosalind Franklin Society Special Award in Science. Dr. Kanneganti was selected for this award because she was a pioneer in a research field that became particularly relevant to all of us in recent years. For a little over 20 years now, immunology and virology researchers have been studying inflammasomes and pyroptosis and talking about cytokine storms, but the COVID-19 pandemic naturally brought heightened interest to these topics when extensive lung inflammation was observed in severely ill SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals. Viral Immunology would therefore like to take this opportunity to recognize a female scientist who had the foresight to ask questions about these topics before they became so newsworthy. As early as 2009, work coming out of Dr. Kanneganti's lab provided insight into how inflammasome sensors, such as NLRP3, interact with viruses such as influenza A. Her work on inflammasomes extended to nonviral diseases, such as colitis, experimental autoimmune encephalitis, and even cancer. More recently, she has turned her attention to the inflammatory response that takes place during SARS-CoV-2 infection. Through research coming out of her lab, we are now learning about PANoptosis, an inflammatory pathway regulated by the PANoptosome complex, which includes aspects of pyroptosis, apoptosis, and/or necroptosis. We would like to congratulate Dr. Kanneganti for her outstanding contributions to the field of viral immunology.
Biosketch
Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti is a world-leading expert in innate immunity, infection, cytokine signaling, and cell death. She is a founding member of the inflammasome field, and her early discoveries provided the first genetic evidence for the role of NLRP3 inflammasome activation in host response to microbial components and live pathogens. She continues to work to establish the importance of the NLRP3 inflammasome in infection, intestinal inflammation, neuroinflammation, cancer, and metabolic diseases. She also identified the critical cell death molecules caspase-8, ZBP1, RIPK1, TAK1, and AIM2 as master regulators of inflammasome activation and the cell death pathways pyroptosis, apoptosis, and necroptosis, leading her to pioneer the concept of PANoptosis and describe its implications in health and disease. She has also defined new cytosolic innate immune sensors and elucidated the activation mechanisms of several inflammasomes, including NLRP3, NLRC4, Pyrin, and AIM2 in infection, inflammatory disease, and cancer.