Miranda Curtiss, M.D., Ph.D.

Allergic diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States. Although we have developed new drugs to control asthma we are still learning about the underlying mechanisms that cause this disease. Using genetic approaches from parasitic infections that cause similar immune system activation to allergic disease, we have identified genes that are important in the interactions between the cells that initiate and maintain allergic inflammation (dendritic cells) and the effector cells that cause inflammatory damage during allergic reactions (T cells). We will extend our studies from parasitic infections into mouse models of allergic asthma to test the roles of these genes. Both the parasitic infection and our asthma model contain chitin, a carbohydrate found in pathogens and allergens, and one of our target genes is a chitin-binding protein. We can explore how our protective immune responses to chitin may influence our allergic reactions in asthma.

Funded in partnership with the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology