Anita S. Chong

About

Anita S. Chong is a Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Surgery-Transplant. Her research focuses on understanding the basis of immunological tolerance and humoral immunity following allogeneic transplantation. She has developed approaches to track endogenous allospecific T and B cell populations, studying their behavior under rejection, memory, sensitization, and tolerance conditions, with the aim of identifying new biomarkers for these states. Her work also investigates the behavior of memory alloreactive B cells in transplantation, seeking strategies to control this subset of cells. Additionally, her research extends into the prevention of infections through vaccination, collaborating with other scientists to identify vaccine candidates and develop nanoparticulate adjuvant-free vaccines that elicit protective immune responses with minimal inflammation, which is particularly relevant for tolerant patients. Her extensive research activities are supported by multiple NIH grants, and she has contributed significantly to the field of transplant immunology through her investigations into immune tolerance, B cell roles in rejection, and vaccine development for transplant stability.

Research topics

• Immunology
• Medicine
• Biology
• Cell biology
• Internal medicine
• Genetics
• Virology
• Materials science
• Microbiology
• Biochemistry

Selected publications

• Sensitization in transplantation: Assessment of risk (STAR) 2019 Working Group Meeting Report

  American Journal of Transplantation · 2020 · 113 citations

  The purpose of the STAR 2019 Working Group was to build on findings from the initial STAR report to further clarify the expectations, limitations, perceptions, and utility of alloimmune assays that are currently in use or in development for risk assessment in the setting of organ transplantation. The goal was to determine the precision and clinical feasibility/utility of such assays in evaluating both memory and primary alloimmune risks. The process included a critical review of biologically dri…

  DOI

• Mechanisms of organ transplant injury mediated by B cells and antibodies: Implications for antibody-mediated rejection

  American Journal of Transplantation · 2020 · 67 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Innate-like self-reactive B cells infiltrate human renal allografts during transplant rejection

  Nature Communications · 2021 · 55 citations

  Intrarenal B cells in human renal allografts indicate transplant recipients with a poor prognosis, but how these cells contribute to rejection is unclear. Here we show using single-cell RNA sequencing that intrarenal class-switched B cells have an innate cell transcriptional state resembling mouse peritoneal B1 or B-innate (Bin) cells. Antibodies generated by Bin cells do not bind donor-specific antigens nor are they enriched for reactivity to ubiquitously expressed self-antigens. Rather, Bin ce…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enabling sublingual peptide immunization with molecular self-assemblies

  Biomaterials · 2020 · 50 citations

  DOI

• Pregnancy-induced humoral sensitization overrides T cell tolerance to fetus-matched allografts in mice

  Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2021 · 41 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Immunological tolerance to semiallogeneic fetuses is necessary to achieving successful first pregnancy and permitting subsequent pregnancies with the same father. Paradoxically, pregnancy is an important cause of sensitization, resulting in the accelerated rejection of offspring-matched allografts. The underlying basis for divergent outcomes following reencounter of the same alloantigens on transplanted organs versus fetuses in postpartum females is incompletely understood. Using a mouse model t…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Deconstructing B cell transplantation tolerance

  NIH · $2.2M · 2019–2024

• NIH Grant R21DK073529

  NIH · $415k · 2009

• Project-002

  NIH · $43.6M · 2012–2028

Frequent coauthors

• James W. Williams

  University of Newcastle Australia

  157 shared

• Jikun Shen

  153 shared

• Howard Sankary

  Loyola University Medical Center

  142 shared

• Dengping Yin

  125 shared

• Lori J. West

  University of Alberta

  102 shared

• Bethany J. Foster

  102 shared

• Roslyn B. Mannon

  University of Alabama at Birmingham

  100 shared

• Germaine Wong

  University of Sydney

  97 shared

Labs

• Anita Chong LabPI

Education

• M.D.

  University of Chicago

• B.S.

  University of California, San Diego

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Jeffrey Rathmellh-128
• Thomas F. Gajewskih-111
• Bana Jabrih-75