Idit Shachar's Lab

Professor Idit Shachar Incumbent of the Dr. Morton And Anne Kleiman Professorial Chair Office: Wolfson Building, Room 427 Tel: +972-8-934-4257, 2781 E-mail: idit.shachar@weizmann.ac.il

My group has been studying several aspects of the mechanisms that regulate B cell homing, differentiation and survival.

In normal individuals, the pool of peripheral lymphocytes is constant in size. The control of lymphoid homeostasis is the result of a very fine balance between lymphocyte production, survival, and proliferation. Survival factors have been shown to play a critical role in maintaining lymphocyte homeostasis.

In order to mature to antibody secreting cells that are essential for the humoral immune response, B cells undergo an ordered differentiation process. In the first step, stem cells differentiate in the bone marrow to immature B cells. These immature B cells leave the bone marrow (BM) and migrate to the spleen where they undergo further maturation events and gain their responsiveness to antigen. The transition from immature to mature B cells in the spleen is characterized by a series of changes in the properties of these cells. Although differentiation of immature B cells is a key event in the immune response, at present, little is known about the molecular mechanisms regulating their targeting to the spleen and their differentiation in this compartment.