Tuesday 7 March, 12:00 - 12:30pm, Seminar Room 1, TRF Building
New directions in GILZ research: shining a light on an
important new target for treatment of autoimmune diseases
Dr Sarah
Jones
Research
Fellow, Centre for Inflammatory Diseases
For years
our group has sought to identify and characterise a safer alternative to
glucocorticoids (“steroids”) for treatment of patients with autoimmune
diseases, particularly systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). GILZ has emerged as
a strong candidate, with important roles in regulating activation and effector
function in multiple types of immune cells that contribute to disease
pathogenesis. I will highlight some new directions for our research, and steps
we are taking on the pathway to clinical translation of our work.
Expanding endogenous antigen specific T regulatory
cells as therapy in autoimmune anti-MPO GN
Dr
Poh-Yi Gan
Research
Fellow, Centre for Inflammatory Diseases
Myeloperoxidase
anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antigen associated glomerulonephritis (MPO-ANCA GN)
is a major cause of renal failure. Despite current therapies, this disease has
considerable therapeutic toxicities and a 30% mortality at five years. This
disease has been shown to result from autoimmunity to MPO in neutrophil
lysosomes. Recent advances in the biological manipulation of autoimmunity by
induction of therapeutic regulatory T cells (Tregs) offers more specific,
safer, alternative therapies. An emerging strategy for enhancing
immunomoulation to autoantigens after the development of autoimmunity has been
to re-present the autoantigenic immunodominant peptides into physiological
homeostatic pathways of apoptotic cell clearance.
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