Welcome to the Hyrien Lab!

Our lab, headed by Dr. Ollivier Hyrien, is part of the Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiology Program within the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division as well as the Herbold Computational Biology Program within the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

We specialize in developing and applying statistical methods, computational tools, and mathematical models to study the immune system and other complex biological systems, such as the microbiome, using high-dimensional, high-throughput data, with the goal of advancing our understanding of these systems and their interactions with human health and treatments.

A core focus of our research is supporting the development of vaccines and passive immunization strategies against diseases caused by pathogens such as the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), malaria, SARS-CoV-2, herpes simplex virus (HSV), as well as treatments against cancer.

One exciting area of our research is the study of the evolution of the B-cell repertoire. Understanding this fascinating process involves solving how B cells, through somatic hypermutation (SHM) and clonal selection, adapt to recognize foreign antigens and neutralize pathogens. This work involves using machine learning and statistical tools as well as stochastic processes (e.g., branching processes) to quantify and predict how SHM accumulate over time in the immunoglobulin genes and how these mutations impact the structure and binding properties of the receptors and antibodies produced by B cells. 

Our lab is highly collaborative, working closely with numerous research groups.