Our Team

Eric Meffre is a tenured Professor in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He completed his education in France at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan/University of Paris, the Pasteur Institute, and the University of Aix-Marseille II, France, where he received his Ph.D. in Immunology in 1996 on the investigation of early B cell development in humans under the supervision of Drs. Michel Fougereau and Claudine Schiff.

Pursuing his interest in B cell research, he continued his postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University, New York, NY, in the laboratory of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig where he made important contributions to the study of B cells and the antibodies they produce. There, he co-directed the development of a new method to assess the frequency of autoreactive B cells by amplifying and cloning immunoglobulin genes from single B cells and testing their reactivity in vitro. This work led to the identification of two early B cell tolerance checkpoints that shape the naïve BCR repertoire in humans. A central selection step for immature B cells removes the vast majority of clones expressing polyreactive and anti-nuclear antibodies in bone marrow, whereas a second B cell tolerance checkpoint in the periphery further eliminates autoreactive new emigrant/transitional B cells that escaped central tolerance before they enter the mature naïve B cell compartment.

This novel approach to assess the reactivity of human B cells was published in Science in 2003 and is cited more than a 1,000 times to date. This method has allowed new strategies to investigate immune responses towards influenza and HIV viruses and more recently Plasmodium falsiparum and led to the isolation of many broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies that are now tested in clinical trials. After his postdoctoral stage, he joined the Weill Cornell Medical College/Hospital for Special Surgery as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology in 2003. He was then recruited to Yale University in 2009 as Associate Professor as part of an initiative in Human and Translational Immunobiology. He was then promoted to Associate Professor with tenure of Immunobiology and of Medicine (Immunology) in 2014.

He is now an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University after he joined Stanford University in 2022 where he continues to investigate the etiology of autoimmune syndromes and the roles played by B cells in these diseases. He aims at characterizing impairments in B cell tolerance associated with autoimmunity and at developing strategies to prevent the production of autoreactive B cells and autoantibodies.

Aiswarya Sethumadhavan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Meffre lab since June 2022. After completing her master’s in microbiology, she pursued her PhD in Immunology from Pondicherry University, India. Her PhD work focused on understanding the mechanisms of Kit signaling in Hematopoietic cells. At Stanford, she is studying the mechanisms of auto reactive B cell selection during Pregnancy.

Email: aks94@stanford.edu, aiswaryasethumadhavan@gmail.com

My name is Clarence Rachel “Clare” Villanueva, and I work as a Life Science Research Professional I at Meffre Lab. My research focus in this lab is the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody treatment in MS patients. I have obtained my Bachelor of Science in Forensic Science at Point Park University, and a Master of Science in Biotechnology with a specialization in Molecular Targets and Drug Discovery at Johns Hopkins University.

Prior to working in Dr. Meffre’s Lab, I used to work for two labs: Dr. Tamara Lotan (focusing on prostate cancer in African American) and Dr. Eric Oliver (focusing on chronic hives activation) at Johns Hopkins Medicine Institute. My hobbies include traveling, reading, baking, trying new restaurants/cuisines, and hiking.

Nick received his BS in biotechnology from the Rochester Institute of Technology (Go Tigers) in 2010.  After graduation he worked as a research technician in Dr. Eric Meffre’s lab in the Immunobiology Department at Yale University studying how peripheral B cell tolerance is established and regulated.  During this time he earned his own project examining the impact of anti-B cell therapy on autoreactive B cell selection in type 1 diabetes patients. 

In 2014 he began his PhD at the University of Vermont in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.  His graduate work centered around investigating the interaction between viral proteins and host ER based redox active chaperones.  After earning his PhD, Nick rejoined the Meffre lab and combined his knowledge of both virology and immunology studying the impact of viral infection on the selection of developing autoreactive B cells.  When he’s not in the lab Nick can be found in the kitchen baking all sorts of crazy confections.

Dr. Farhana Rahman joined the Meffre Lab in August’ 2023 as a post-doctoral scholar. At Stanford, she is studying the mechanisms of defective TLR9 function and impaired central B cell tolerance in systemic sclerosis.

She completed her master’s in microbiology from Dhaka University, Bangladesh. She pursued her PhD in Molecular Biology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her PhD work focused on understanding the role of helicase protein in malaria infection. She completed her 4 years of post-doctoral research in Cell-biology and Immunology at Scripps Research institute from San Diego, California. Her main research interest was to identify new possible targets for correcting pathological processes specific for kidney dysfunction in lysosomal storage disorder. She also experienced in various assay development platform in R&D pipelines at Biotech company. Her hobbies include Photography, traveling, baking, and cooking new dishes.

Email: farhana1@stanford.edu, farhanar781@gmail.com

Shray Patel joined the Meffre Lab in August 2022 as a research assistant investigating anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody treatment in multiple sclerosis. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University as part of the 7-year accelerated medical program, where he worked in the developmental neuroscience laboratory of Dr. Yingwei Mao. There, he investigated the role of zinc finger protein 804A in schizophrenia neuropathology. In the near future, he will be pursuing a medical degree at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and conducting translational and clinical research in cerebrovascular disease at the University of Pennsylvania. In his free time, Shray enjoys reading philosophy, playing dungeons and dragons, and trying new restaurants.

Dr. Adrien Mirouse joined the Meffre Lab in September 2022 as a post-doctoral scholar. He works on B-cell central tolerance checkpoint defects in auto-immune diseases, especially in systemic lupus erythematosus, and how to reverse these defects.

He went to Montpellier Medical School in France and received his medical degree from La Sorbonne University in Paris, his master’s degree from Paris-Saclay University. He completed his residency in Paris and worked as Assistant Professor in Saint-Louis hospital in Paris and then in La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. His main research interests are focusing on systemic auto-immune diseases including systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic vasculitis, Behçet’s disease, non-malignant hematological diseases, and critically-ill patients with systemic diseases. He led investigator-initiated and industry sponsored clinical trials. During his PhD at La Sorbonne Université in Paris, he focused on new ways to define and classify auto-immune diseases in order to develop new therapeutic strategies.