Subject Award · Life Sciences · 2026
The ten finalist universities are the ten highest-ranked on the Immunology & Microbiology collaboration index, listed here alphabetically until the full index publishes on 15 September. Each finalist is represented by an academic whose recent work exemplifies why: a real project, drawn from the open scholarly record, cited so you can check it.
The finalists
Metabolic modeling of single Th17 cells reveals regulators of autoimmunity
Th17 cells are central to immune defence but can also drive autoimmune disease. Building metabolic models of individual cells, the work looks for the regulators that tip them towards autoimmunity, an approach that treats cellular metabolism as a source of control rather than as background chemistry.
Clonally expanded B cells in multiple sclerosis bind EBV EBNA1 and GlialCAM
Published in Nature, the study examines clonally expanded B cells in multiple sclerosis and shows they bind both an Epstein-Barr virus protein, EBNA1, and GlialCAM, a molecule of the nervous system. The finding, from teams across Germany, the UK and the US, bears on how the virus may relate to the disease.
Immune cells behave differently depending on the tissue they inhabit, something still poorly mapped in humans. Using full-length single-cell RNA sequencing across four human tissues, the team traced how innate lymphoid cells carry a transcriptional imprint of their location, identified migratory and tissue-residency signatures, and reconstructed possible routes from naive cells to mature subsets.
Each year brings new genetic explanations for why some immune systems fail. This expert committee update documents 55 newly recognised single-gene defects and one condition caused by autoantibodies, describing their key clinical and laboratory features and bringing the recognised total of inborn errors of immunity to 485.
For 24 years the IPD-IMGT/HLA Database has offered a curated, searchable repository of HLA sequences, covering the most polymorphic genes in the human genome. Now holding over 35,000 alleles, the resource has developed a suite of new tools so that the surge of data from next generation sequencing can still be accessed and presented clearly.
The Role of Oxidative Stress in Atherosclerosis
Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the vascular system and the leading cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide. This review examines the part played by oxidative stress, describing how reactive oxygen species are both necessary for vascular signalling and capable of driving inflammation, endothelial dysfunction and altered lipid metabolism, and surveys the enzymes that produce them alongside the antioxidant systems meant to keep them in check.
Macrophages take their cues from the tissue around them, and the lung is a demanding place to live. Reviewing a decade of rapid progress, the work examines how the lung environment shapes macrophage development, metabolism and function in health, infection, inflammation and repair, and sets out the questions the field still needs to answer.
Global antibiotic consumption and usage in humans, 2000-18: a spatial modelling study
Antimicrobial resistance depends on how much antibiotic the world actually uses, yet many low- and middle-income countries lack the surveillance to say. This spatial modelling study combines household survey data on treatment of young children with respiratory infections and consumption figures from sources including WHO, IQVIA and European surveillance networks to estimate global antibiotic consumption from 2000 to 2018.
Immunogenic cell stress and death
When cells are stressed or die, the immune system reads the signals they leave behind. This work examines immunogenic cell stress and death: how dying cells alert immune defences, and why that dialogue matters, a question sitting squarely at the meeting point of cell biology and immunology.
Cellular origins of dsRNA, their recognition and consequences
Double-stranded RNA is a hallmark of viral infection, yet cells produce it themselves as well. The work reviews where cellular double-stranded RNA comes from, how the cell's sensors recognise it and what follows when they do, a question central to understanding immune activation and its misfiring.
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Partners verify their data, feature their academics, and are eligible for the Subject Awards. Finalists are identified from open data; winners are decided by our editorial team and announced on 15 September 2026.
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Clonally expanded B cells in multiple sclerosis bind EBV EBNA1 and GlialCAM
Cross-tissue single-cell landscape of human monocytes and macrophages in health and disease
Guidelines for the use of flow cytometry and cell sorting in immunological studies (third edition)
Active eosinophils regulate host defence and immune responses in colitis
Personalized RNA neoantigen vaccines stimulate T cells in pancreatic cancer
Research priorities for an HIV cure: International AIDS Society Global Scientific Strategy 2021
SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers profibrotic macrophage responses and lung fibrosis
Two Randomized Trials of Neutralizing Antibodies to Prevent HIV-1 Acquisition
Two Randomized Trials of Neutralizing Antibodies to Prevent HIV-1 Acquisition
Obesity alters pathology and treatment response in inflammatory disease
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