Understanding autoimmune disease

The overall aim of the project is to develop new therapies to treat human autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and endogenous uveoretinitis.

Autoimmune diseases occur in patients when their immune system attacks their own tissues (e.g. uveoretinitis when the immune system attacks the eye tissues and MS occur when the immune system attacks the central nervous system).

Although the direct cause of many autoimmune diseases is not clear, it is well known that immunological events lead to breakdown of tolerance (immune tolerance is the process by which the immune system does not mount an immune response). This starts the progression of autoimmune diseases.

The aim of our research is to understand the mechanisms for the breakdown in self-tolerance resulting in disease induction and where and how these processes are initiated. In summary, the project is to understand how autoimmune diseases begin and how best we can treat them?

The research involves a lot of in vitro laboratory work, using tissue culture techniques. However, work in tissue culture cell lines can never have the physiological relevance of the in vivo work and there is no in vitro model that can reproduce the complex interplay of molecules and cells among different tissues and organs that shape the mammalian immune system.