Rafi Ahmed
Immunologist who studies T-cell and B-cell memory and showed that mTOR is a major regulator of memory CD8 T-cell formation.
Director, Emory Vaccine Center · Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University · Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar · Member, US National Academy of Sciences
Portrait: Emory Vaccine Center
Rafi Ahmed directs the Emory Vaccine Center and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory University in Atlanta. His lab studies immune memory in T cells and B cells, with the aim of building better vaccines and treatments. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
His group is also known for showing that the receptor PD-1 helps T cells become exhausted during long-lasting viral infections, which led to PD-1 blocking antibodies being tried in infections and cancer.
The 2009 study in the Atlas, published in Nature, found that mTOR helps decide which CD8 T cells become long-lived memory cells. Surprisingly, rapamycin, usually seen as an immune suppressor, improved the number and quality of memory T cells in virus-infected mice, and in vaccinated monkeys.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | A | mTOR regulates memory CD8 T-cell differentiation ARA2009 Showed that mTORC1 acts inside CD8 T cells to control memory differentiation and that rapamycin treatment improves memory responses to infection and vaccines; Ahmed was senior author. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Rafi Ahmed.
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- Koichi Araki Immunologist in Rafi Ahmed's group at Emory who discovered that rapamycin improves memory killer T cells, a finding that linked mTOR to vaccine design
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