David officially received tenure from the University of Pennsylvania! This is a huge accomplishment and reflects on the hard work that he (and the team at the CSTL) do everyday to advance knowledge about Castleman Disease and other cytokine storm disorders.

Sheila Pierson, the Associate Director of Clinical Research at the CSTL, was a Model Supervisor award recipient for 2023! Members of her team nominated her for the award and she was selected as a top supervisor at Penn. Well deserved, Sheila!

Dr. Fajgenbaum’s submission to the NIH received a fundable score (12th percentile!). A number of individuals on the translational research team were involved in proofreading/editing the grant and getting all the experiments done for preliminary data. This grant will bring together a number of researchers across Penn and other academic institutions.

Dr. Melanie Mumau was selected as a recipient of this years’ Young Investigator Draft Grant award. This award comes with a $20,000 dollar grant to answer important questions about Castleman Disease.

Several CSTL members took part in the annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in New Orleans, LA. A number of team members were able to present their Castleman research in both poster and presentation format.

The CSTL visited the Philadelphia Zoo to celebrate Sheila Pierson’s publication in Nature Communications on identifying the chemokine CXCL13 as a biomarker in iMCD. It was a team effort to get the necessary information together and see this study across the finish line. Great job team!

CSTL Director, Dr. David Fajgenbaum, has written a paper on Cytokine Storms with Dr. Carl June that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on December 3, 2020! A “cytokine storm” is an immune response that spirals out of control and is characterized by uncontrolled release of proinflammatory cytokines. In this paper, Drs. Fajgenbaum and June developed the first unifying definition of a cytokine storm and highlighted the most up-to-date research into treatment approaches for diseases such as Castleman disease and COVID-19.