Peritoneal Immunity Group

Research

The main focus of research remains the mechanisms controlling leukocyte recruitment and clearance during inflammation. The initial focus has been on acute inflammation and defining those factors that govern resolution of inflammation.

Over the next years the focus of our work will be in examining the mechanisms by which resolving acute inflammation becomes manifested as chronic inflammation characterized by deregulated leukocyte trafficking and activation.

With this latter aim in mind we have recently developed a flare model of peritoneal inflammation that has provided clear evidence of a chronic inflammatory phenotype being developed as a result of repeated inflammatory hits.

These data parallel our clinical observations of deregulated IL-6 signalling in PD patients with a history of infection. Given the presumed importance of IL-6 signalling in many of these processes these studies will use both IL-6 deficient mice as well as conditional mutants of the JAK-STAT signaling cascade to dissect these events.