Prebys Foundation Grants Of $1.6 Million Support La Jolla Institute For Immunology

By Debbie L. Sklar, Times of San Diego

February 23, 2022

The Conrad Prebys Foundation has given more than $1.17 million to support La Jolla Institute for Immunology’s flow cytometry core and more than $415,000 to fuel infectious disease research led by LJI Instructor Julie Burel.

“This support allows LJI scientists to buy essential equipment and pursue fascinating early career research,” said LJI President and CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire. “We are proud to strengthen our relationship with The Conrad Prebys Foundation as we lead immunology research here in San Diego.”

The Conrad Prebys Foundation’s mission is to improve quality of life — primarily in San Diego County — through the distribution of grants to support medical research, healthcare, visual and performing arts, and other charitable causes.

These new grants continue founder Conrad Prebys’ legacy of supporting innovative research in the health sciences.

The new funding to LJI’s flow cytometry core lets the Institute purchase new cutting-edge equipment for research into diseases such as cancers, COVID-19, and heart disease.

“The foundation is pleased to support this world-renowned institute,” said Erin Decker, director of grantmaking. “LJI is driving understanding and progress across a wide range of diseases. The Institute’s vanguard flow cytometry core and its top team of technicians are poised for future breakthroughs, and this funding means LJI scientists, and the entire San Diego research community, will have access to enhanced equipment.”

Flow cytometry is a method for sorting individual immune cells and analyzing their roles in fighting disease or contributing to autoimmunity. Skilled technicians in the flow cytometry core at LJI carry out experiments for scientists and offer services to nearby research collaborators at UC San Diego, Moores Cancer Center, the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Scripps Research.

The Conrad Prebys Foundation’s support will allow Burel to build on the surprising findings of her 2019 Tullie and Rickey Families SPARK Award for Innovations in Immunology. Burel, a member of the Peters Lab, has pioneered the study of doublets. Doublets occur when two immune cells are stuck together.

For decades, researchers thought doublets were an accidental artifact of certain laboratory procedures commonly used for analyzing clinical samples. Burel’s work, in collaboration with the LJI flow cytometry core, has shown that some doublets do have a role in the body—they may even be a sign that the immune system is fighting an infection.

“Doublets are found at increased frequency in the blood of individuals with diseases such as tuberculosis, or dengue fever,” Burel said.

Detecting doublets and analyzing their content could show researchers how well an individual is fighting an infection or responding to a vaccine.

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