Research Focus: Mucosal-Systemic Immune Engineering

Local Pulmonary infection can generate a systemic immune response. Post infection, pathogens are recognized by tissue resident dendritic cells (antigen presenting cells) in pulmonary milieu and taken to mediastinal lymph node. T cells and B cells which are recircuited to lymph nodes continuously, become activated when presented with antigen. Immune cells then differentiate to effector cells responding to pathogen attack. It’s interesting, that infection or pathological damage in local pulmonary milieu can generate system wide immune responses. Our lab has already established lung on chip model and we are further interested in studying the communication of pulmonary milieu with lymphoid organs. Thus, we are working on creating an interconnected lung-lymphoid system on chip for better understanding of lymphoid immune talk with pulmonary cells during acute infections and vaccine responses. We are engineering a miniature physiologically relevant on-chip system with connected airway and lymphoid organoids wherein pathogen/vaccine/antigen presenting cells migrates from pulmonary compartment to lymphoid compartment and immune cells migrate back to pulmonary compartment to provide immunity and surveillance.