Immune regulation, cellular trafficking and chemokine receptors in intestinal inflammation

Funded Activity Summary

The intestine is exposed to a vast array of foreign substances, or antigens, from food to the abundant bacteria that populate the gut. The gut immune system has developed elaborate and poorly understood mechanisms for preventing inflammation in response to these antigens. A breakdown in these control mechanisms may be partly responsible for the chronic intestinal diseases known as inflammatory bowel diseases, which cause abdominal pain, diarrhoea and bleeding. A recently described immune cell type, known as a regulatory T cell (T reg), is a powerful candidate cell as a master controller of intestinal inflammation. We know that T cells move to various sites in the body under the influence of hormone-like proteins known as chemokines, but the existence of T reg cells in the intestine, their characteristics, their behaviour and their specific response to chemokines, are all unknown. These studies aim to examine the presence and nature of T reg cells in human and mouse intestine, in both health and inflammation, and to explore how these cells migrate into the gut under the influence of chemokines. This knowledge will help in our understanding of intestinal immunity and endogenous regulation of immune responses, and will provide new targets for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, and potentially other inflammatory diseases.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2003

End Date: 01-01-2005

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $204,750.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Sport and exercise nutrition

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Crohn's disease | T cell immunity | cellular immunity | chemokine | gut immunity | inflammatory bowel disease | mucosal immunity | regulation of immune response | ulcerative colitis

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