Teddy Yewdell - Principal Scientist, Immunology Discovery, Research Biology

Teddy Yewdell

Principal Scientist, Immunology Discovery, Research Biology

"Unparalleled resources and interdisciplinary collaboration, extreme scientific rigor, a core belief in basic scientific research, and the opportunity to directly improve a patient’s quality of life; Genentech is one of a kind."
2
Years at Genentech
5
Awards & Honors

After completing my PhD in Biochemistry with Aaron Straight at Stanford, my evolving scientific interests led to a postdoc in B cell biology. Working with Jayanta Chaudhuri at Memorial Sloan Kettering, I studied molecular mechanisms of antibody affinity maturation and class switch recombination. I was fascinated by the Darwinian natural selection that occurs amongst B cell clones during a germinal center reaction; an elegant illustration of evolution and natural selection deriving a miniaturized, vastly accelerated version of itself. My postdoc work also focused on understanding the different types of B cells arising from germinal centers following a viral infection, with a particular interest in long-lived memory B cells, and how to manipulate germinal centers to enhance humoral immunity.

I joined Genentech in 2022 as a Principal Scientist in the Department of Immunology Discovery, where my lab is investigating the role of B cells and antibodies in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Featured Publication

Temporal dynamics of persistent germinal centers and memory B cell differentiation following respiratory virus infection.

Cell Rep. 2021 Nov 9;37(6):109961. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109961. PMID: 34758310; PMCID: PMC7612942.

Yewdell WT, Smolkin RM, Belcheva KT, Mendoza A, Michaels AJ, Cols M, Angeletti D, Yewdell JW, Chaudhuri J.

A Hyper-IgM Syndrome Mutation in Activation-Induced Cytidine Deaminase Disrupts G-Quadruplex Binding and Genome-wide Chromatin Localization.

Immunity. 2020 Nov 17;53(5):952-970.e11. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2020.10.003. Epub 2020 Oct 23. PMID: 33098766; PMCID: PMC8356774.

Yewdell WT, Kim Y, Chowdhury P, Lau CM, Smolkin RM, Belcheva KT, Fernandez KC, Cols M, Yen WF, Vaidyanathan B, Angeletti D, McDermott AB, Yewdell JW, Sun JC, Chaudhuri J.