The Center for Human Immunology, Autoimmunity, and Inflammation (CHI) is a new intramural trans-NIH initiative located on the Bethesda, Maryland campus. The Center’s mission is the study of the human immune system in health and disease and to this end it will utilize current and develop advanced technologies to interrogate the human immune system. Research will be conducted by integrated teams of physicians and basic scientists representing both the entire spectrum of NIH Institutes and the CHI. The goals of the Center are to gain a better understanding of shared immune pathophysiologies that underlie specific diseases and the role of inflammation in a wide variety of common disorders, including cancer, atherosclerosis, rheumatic syndromes, and neurologic degeneration, and to rapidly translate new knowledge into improvements in diagnosis and treatment of disease in support of the core NIH mission to improve human health.

The mission of the CHI is cooperative research based on advanced technologies in order to efficiently translate enhanced understanding of immune function and pathophysiology to the clinic. The Center is based on cooperative research, technologically driven with the goal of understanding human immunology, and addressing pathophysiologically-related human diseases. This initiative is translational, but this overused term is defined here as both directly resulting in improved therapy of immune-medicated diseases and deriving important and often unique biologic information from the study of ill human beings.

The Center is envisioned as a cooperative enterprise, with representatives form many NIH Institutes working together on focused projects with clear shared goals.

The Center will provide specific technologies often unavailable to individual laboratories because of cost, complexity, and novelty, incorporated into three technology centers dedicated to:

• assays of immune cells and their products, mainly based on flow cytometry and other emerging multiplexed techniques;
  
• high-throughput systems technologies, involving the use of new methods for large scale examination of the genome, gene expression epigenetic modulation, as well as the proteome, lipidome, and metabolome, and the application of advanced biostatical and computer modeling methods for mining these diverse data to aid in understanding immune function and pathology;
  
• protocol development, with staff dedicated to the efficient translation to the clinic with appropriate ethical and regulatory requirements for human research.

The Center's focus is human immunology, normal but especially pathologic, with an emphasis on shared pathophysiologic mechanisms that underlie disease. This includes recognized immunologially-mediated diseases, organ specific autoimmunity, and the role of inflammation in a wide variety of common diseases, including cancer, atherosclerosis, and neurologic degeneration.