Post Doctoral Fellow-NRSA

Pathology

Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (New York, NY)

Michael L. Dustin

My interests are in better understanding how the immune system of the intestine and liver discriminate between commensal versus pathogenic microbes.

My primary research interests are in integrating biochemical, molecular genetic and quantitative single-cell optical imaging approaches to understand the regulation of T cell activation in vivo. Of particular interest is the regulation of T cell activation in the liver and intestine. Pathogenic infections such as Plasmodium, the causative agent of Malaria, and Hepatitis C Virus are major global health problems. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) afflicts 1.4 million individuals in the U.S alone with an estimated incidence as high as 396/100,000 and on the rise globally. Additionally, emerging infectious diseases, such as Salmonella, Norwalk-Like Virus’ and E. Coli, which invade via the intestinal route are a major global health issue and therefore require that we better understand gastrointestinal immunity. Next, the intestinal blood supply drains to liver and the liver is therefore bathed in gut derived antigen. The immune system in liver and gut normally discriminate between innocuous antigen (self, commensal bacteria, food particles etc.) and deleterious microbes (pathogenic bacteria, virus etc) to induce the appropriate immunity. However, insufficient responses to pathogenic microbes lead to disease while aberrant response to enteric microbes leads to IBD. I aim to integrate my experience in molecular genetic, cellular, biochemical and optical fluorescence microscopy to further define the regulation of lymphocyte activation in vivo. These studies should reveal novel mechanisms of immune regulation and provide targets for therapeutic intervention of emerging intestinal infectious diseases and IBD.

2000-2002 Agensys Inc (formerly Urogenesys Inc), Santa Monica, CA