Recording intelligenceAI-generated brief · check the source for context

Prenatal Immune Development and Macrophages

42:04 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

Listen to the original

Listen to the episode

Brief overview

Immunologist Anna Boden traces a winding career into studying how prenatal exposures shape lifelong immune development.

  1. Cell of origin dictates lifelong immune functionBoden argues macrophages replaced from bone marrow can look identical yet never repeat the developmental trajectory that specified the originals.
  2. Prenatal exposures are the lab's central questionInfection, inflammation, nutrition changes and toxicants in pregnancy are studied for how they reprogram stem cell function and immune output.
  3. A non-linear career is a workable careerPsychology, neurobiology, metabolism, stem cells and finally immunology — she tells students she bumbled along and still got there.
Executive Summary AI
  • In an Immune office interview recorded 29 August 2025, Cindy Leifer hosts Anna Boden, an associate professor at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah.0:47
  • Boden says she dropped the Cornell biology major as an undergraduate because she could not get above a C plus, moved into biopsychology, and learned to think in Barb Strep's lab studying lead and prenatal cocaine exposure on the developing nervous system.2:25
  • After a Brown PhD she mastered out of, a Cornell PhD in Patrick Stover's folate metabolism lab, and a year of cardiac iPSC work at UCLA cut short by a family move, she landed in Camilla Forsberg's blood stem cell lab in Santa Cruz and came to immunology through hematopoiesis.8:59
  • Her lab now studies congenital cytomegalovirus infection, the most common cause of pediatric non-genetic sensorineural hearing loss, plus prenatal inflammation, nutrition and toxicant exposure, asking how cell of origin and fate specification set the function of resident tissue macrophages for life.17:59
  • Asked what she tells anxious mentees, Boden says she had no idea what she was doing, bumbled along and made it, and that authentic enjoyment beats metrics and comparison to other people.30:52
Key Quote
“That's where I learned how to use my brain.”
— Anna Boden3:44
Key Quote
“I didn't know what a germinal center was. I didn't know T cells.”
— Anna Boden11:09
Key Quote
“I wouldn't even say that's when I became an immunologist. I, it's been a slow evolution.”
— Anna Boden11:35