Inflammatory Mechanisms

We have several diverse projects running with the common aim of identifying novel inflammatory signatures that may be amenable to therapeutic blockade, or be predictive markers of treatment failure. We wish to examine the link between bacterial opsonisation by the immune system and the CD4+ T cell responses to these bacteria, with the aim of identifying pathogenic and protective T cell signatures. Previous work has identified a novel role for oncostatin M (OSM) in mice and humans. Upregulation of OSM was found to be a predictive marker for anti-TNF treatment failure in IBD and blockade of OSM in vivo ameliorated disease symptoms in a mouse model of colitis. Therefore, we wish to exploit dysbiosis- and genetic-driven IBD mouse models and primary human tissue samples to explore the impact of OSM on intestinal epithelial cells and barrier functions in health and disease.

A comprehensive understanding of how the microbiota-immune system crosstalk is perturbed in chronic inflammation is essential, particularly in light of the high rate of treatment failure. Using a combination of mouse and human T cell immunology, mucosal immunology and animal models of disease as well as clinical specimens and sequence based approaches, we aim to identify environmental, microbial and inflammatory drivers that promote maladaptation and gut tissue inflammation. Our focus on clinical samples ensure that the work we carry out is of high relevance to patients and increases the likelihood of us delivering findings of future clinical relevance.

Group leader
Prof. Dr. med. Dr. rer. nat. Ahmed N. Hegazy

Ph.D. students
Camila Cancino
Luis Velasco
Maria Saliutina

MD/PhD students
Agata Konopka

MD students
Yanjiang Lue
Zhenjie Yin

Master student
Anais Akbala

Max Löhning, Farzin Mashreghi, Chiara Romagnani, Andrey Kruglov, Carl Weidinger, Brita Siegmund, Andreas Diefenbach

Kevin Thurely, Christoph Becker, Sebastian Zundler, Stefan Wirtz, Thomas Höfer, Lukas Flatz

Zlatko Trajanoski, Andreas Bergthaler, Isabelle Arnold (ETH)

Zlatko Trajanoski, Andreas Bergthaler, Isabelle Arnold (ETH)