Tuesday 23 May, 12:00 - 1:00pm, Seminar Room 1, TRF Building
Speaker: A/Prof Meredith O'Keeffe
NHMRC Senior
Research Fellow
Lab Head
Department
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Monash University
The IFN-lambda (l) cytokine family is encoded by 2 genes in
mouse (IFN-l2 and IFN-l3) and a total of 4 genes in humans, (l1-l4).
IFN- l demonstrates potent anti-viral
activity against several viruses, mediated by STAT signalling via the novel
IFN- l receptor, a heterodimer of the
IL-10Rb and the novel IL-28RA chain. Signalling via the IFN- l receptor leads to the expression of ISGs
that resemble those induced by type I IFNs (IFN-I). However, the receptor for
IFN-l exhibits highly restricted
expression. It is expressed by neutrophils and it is also expressed by
hepatocytes and throughout epithelial surfaces including in the intestine,
kidney and skin. Moreover, the receptor is expressed by dendritic cells (DC) in
the steady state and this is further upregulated during DC activation.
Plasmacytoid (p) DC produce
IFN-l in response to TLR9
ligands. Mouse CD8+ and human CD141+ conventional
(c) DC1 subsets share the unique ability to produce large amounts of IFN- l in response to TLR3 ligands and DNA
viruses. We have investigated the role of IFN-l
in DC development and function in the steady state and in settings of
inflammation.
Our findings indicate that
IFN-l signalling is required in DC for
optimal responses to TLR ligands in vivo. IFN-lambda signalling is
required for optimal antigen presentation and enhances the activation of T
cells by human DC.
We have investigated the
potential role of IFN-l produced by DC in autoimmune settings. Data on a cohort of
SLE patients from the Monash Lupus Clinic will be presented.
Associate
Professor Meredith O'Keeffe is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Head of the
Laboratory of Dendritic Cell Driven Immunity in Health and Disease, Biomedicine
Discovery Institute and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
Monash University. Meredith received her PhD from Monash University in 1998 and
then spent 6 years in the laboratory of Prof Ken Shortman, WEHI where she was
trained in dendritic cell biology. She then set up a dendritic cell research
lab at Bavarian-Nordic GmbH, Munich, Germany and returned to Australia in 2009,
setting up a lab at the Burnet Institute, Melbourne. Meredith joined the
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the end of 2015.
Meredith's
current research interests include investigating the function of dendritic
cells in Lupus disease and malaria infection and examining the development and
function of dendritic cells in Myelodysplasia.
Dendritic
cells are sentinels of the immune system that produce cytokines and interferons
upon sensing danger. They are also professional antigen presenting cells, thereby
connecting the innate and adaptive immune systems. Our laboratory investigates
how pathogens and their products and/or or self-nucleic acids activate
dendritic cells. We aim to decipher how this activation influences the function
of dendritic cells. We investigate how this process may differ in different
body locations, at different ages and in different disease settings. Major aims
are to understand the role of dendritic cells in bone marrow malignancies and
in autoimmune diseases such as Lupus.
Please
contact andrea.johannessen@monash.edu to
schedule a meeting with Meredith after
the seminar.
Further information, including the link to add the seminar series to your google calendar, is available from CID Weekly Seminar Series website [http://www.med.monash.edu.au/scs/medicine/cid/seminar-series.html]
No comments:
Post a Comment