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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.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) may be an important metabolic regulator of whole-body glucose. While important roles have been ascribed to macrophages in regulating metabolic functions in BAT, little is known of the roles of other immune cells subsets, particularly dendritic cells (DCs). Eating a high-fat diet may compromise the development of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs)-which give rise to DCs-in bone marrow, with less known of its effects in BAT. We have previously demonstrated that ongoing exposure to low-dose ultraviolet radiation (UVR) significantly reduced the 'whitening' effect of eating a high-fat diet upon interscapular (i) BAT of mice.

We recently reported that offspring of mice treated during pregnancy with the microbial-derived immunomodulator OM-85 manifest striking resistance to allergic airways inflammation, and localized the potential treatment target to fetal conventional dendritic cell (cDC) progenitors. Here, we profile maternal OM-85 treatment-associated transcriptomic signatures in fetal bone marrow, and identify a series of immunometabolic pathways which provide essential metabolites for accelerated myelopoiesis.

The role of oestrogen in experimental atopic asthma, and guide future research on sex-related variations in atopic asthma susceptibility/intensity

Neonatal dendritic cells generated form CD34+ cord blood progenitors have a higher inflammatory potential when exposed to viral than bacterial related stimuli