Grant: Project Grant

The innate immune system is our first line of defense against microbial invasion, tissue injury and cellular transformation. Among its arsenals are evolutionary conserved sensors of danger signals named inflammasomes that defend the organism from pathogens and noxious insults by inducing protective responses such as inflammation and cell death. Although these responses are normally beneficial, their exacerbated activation could lead to detrimental consequences such as tissue destruction, increased susceptibility to infection and auto-inflammatory diseases. The proposed research project explores fine-tuning mechanisms that control the inflammasomes and cell death pathways to confer tissue protection and counter disease onset and progression. We specifically focus on two important cellular pathways previously linked to human diseases including auto-inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases and explore their specific role in inflammasome activation and cell death regulation.