Lectures and seminars CfA seminar: The solution of a 150 year old riddle discovers a new mechanism to resolve eosinophilic inflammation
Speaker: Prof. Bart Lambrecht, Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology and Immunoregulation, VIB Center for Inflammation Research, Ghent, Belgium. Coffee and tea served 14:30. Welcome!
About the speaker:
Research in Prof. Lambrecht's group is focused on unraveling the functions of lung dendritic cells and epithelial cells in asthma and respiratory viral infection. Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by eosinophilic airway inflammation, goblet cell metaplasia and bronchial hyperreactivity. A frequent cause of exacerbations is respiratory viral infection. There is an epidemic of asthma in the Western world, of which the cause in unclear, and for which novel forms of prevention and treatment are urgently needed. In allergic asthma, allergen-specific Th2 lymphocytes cause inflammation, as well as formation of allergen specific IgE, also known as allergic sensitization.
In the past years, Prof. Lambrecht's lab has found crucial roles for antigen presenting dendritic cells (DCs) in causing allergic sensitization. They have shown that DCs also play a crucial role also in maintenance of chronic airway inflammation.