Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Luning Prak is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She has made several contributions to the field of autoimmunity research including demonstrating receptor editing a mechanism of central tolerance, defining different pathways of antibody heavy and light chain editing and rearrangement, developing immune repertoire profiling assays to monitor B and T cell clones and track clones in different tissues and during immune or autoimmune responses. At Penn, she directs a research lab that focuses on B cell autoimmunity, serving as an active member of the NIH-funded Human Pancreas Analysis Program (with an emphasis on type 1 diabetes). She also directs the Human Immunology Core and the Clinical Immunology Lab at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, both of which perform assays to evaluate and monitor individuals with autoimmune conditions. Dr. Luning Prak serves on the scientific advisory boards for The Antibody Society, Enpicom, IEDB and the Autoimmune Association (chair). She is the former president and currently co-directs the Biological Resources Working Group of the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community.