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The Pregnancy and Early Life Immunology team's overall research vision is targeted towards understanding immunological development during early life.
We are studying immune cells from identical twins of which one suffers and one does not suffer from allergic disease to identify specific mechanisms that may play important roles in disease development.
This study is designed to identify the specific unique immune cell response that occurs in these children with recurrent disease.
Studies in Europe show exposure of pregnant women to high levels of microbial products stimulate immune function maturation in their offspring
The study aims to identify the mechanism for this so that this knowledge can be used to better treat asthma and allergies in both males and females.
This project investigates how cells of the immune system respond to substances to cause allergies to help develop new treatments.
Treatment options for viral lung infections are currently limited. We aimed to explore the safety and efficacy of inhaled ethanol in an influenza-infection mouse model.
The bone marrow is a specialised niche responsible for the maintenance of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells during homeostasis and inflammation. Recent studies however have extended this essential role to the extramedullary and extravascular lung microenvironment. Here, we provide further evidence for a reservoir of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells within the lung from embryonic day 18.5 until adulthood.
The way the immune system operates differs between males and females. This is due to both differential expression of immune-related genes from the sex chromosomes as well as the immune modulatory properties of sex hormones. Together, these effects contribute to a skewed prevalence of disease and disease course between males and females, including allergic-, infectious-, autoimmune-, and cancerous disease.
Neutrophils are the most abundant immune cell in circulation. However, due to a number of technical challenges for researchers, including the neutrophil's short lifespan and difficulties with preservation, they are often discarded during blood processing and thus ignored in cohort studies. As such, the contribution of neutrophils to disease and their involvement in disease mechanisms is less explored compared with other immune cell types.