Research Interests

Our research group is interested in identifying the endogenous regulatory pathways that control the normal processes of inflammation and tissue repair and how these go wrong in immune mediated inflammatory diseases.

Broadly speaking we have three main areas of interest:

• Factors affecting leukocyte entry into tissue, movement through tissue and their subsequent exit from tissue.
• Regulation on bone homeostasis and repair mechanisms.
• Endothelial phenotypes in health, disease and different tissue beds.

We have ongoing projects examining:

• How mesenchymal stromal cells influence endothelial responses and leukocyte recruitment.
• The ability of PEPITEM to regulate osteoblast and osteoclast function in health, old age and bone related diseases.
• The shared mechanisms of pathology in old age and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs), focusing on changes in leukocyte phenotypes and function.
• The regulation of T-cell trafficking in health and arthritis.

We combine imaging novel in vitro, multi-cellular static and flow-based culture systems incorporating primary human cells (from healthy individuals or patients), with systems biology approaches to large omics datasets and murine models of acute or persistent inflammation.