About the Center

Our investigators tackle some of the toughest childhood diseases and address our nation’s biggest health challenges.

The overarching goal of the Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies (CIIT) at Seattle Children's Research Institute is to advance our understanding of human diseases impacting the human immune system and to harness the therapeutic potential of immunology to treat disease. Our dynamic group of distinguished experts across multiple disciplines work together to solve some of the immune system's most complex problems. Many of our researchers are physician-scientists who treat patients in the Immunology, Rheumatology, Pulmonary, Nephrology, and Gastroenterology clinics at Seattle Children’s Hospital. In order to achieve our ultimate goal of applying what we learn to the care of our patients, our research extends full-circle from clinical questions to laboratory-based investigation and back to patients.

Harnessing the Immune System’s Healing Potential

We start with the premise that a child's immune system has vast healing potential. Thus, we are focused on harnessing that potential and manipulating the immune system to treat diverse pediatric diseases, including immune deficiency, systemic autoimmunity, infection, allergy, cancer, and the rejection of organ transplants. In these endeavors, our scientists are working to design improved diagnostic tools for primary immune deficiency syndromes, to devise innovative vaccine strategies, and to develop novel gene and cell engineering technologies for the treatment of human protein deficiencies, immunodeficiency syndromes and systemic autoimmune diseases.

Who We Are

The Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies (CIIT) is one of 7 research centers forming Seattle Children's Research Institute. We are located within the Jack MacDonald Building at 1900 9th Ave in downtown Seattle.

Dr. David Rawlings, director of CIIT, leads a distinguished group of experts that includes 16 Principal Investigators and over 80 research scientists, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows, who work together to solve some of the immune systems most complex problems.