Nicholas Jonathan Cole King

Nicholas Jonathan Cole King
  • M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D.
  • Managing Director at The University of Sydney

About

246
Publications
27,431
Reads
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9,722
Citations
Current institution
The University of Sydney
Current position
  • Managing Director
Additional affiliations
January 2008 - present
The University of Sydney
Position
  • Managing Director
January 2005 - present
The University of Sydney
Position
  • Professor (Full)
June 2002 - March 2020
The University of Sydney
Position
  • Head of Department
Education
February 1982 - August 1986
Australian National University
Field of study
  • Microbiology
January 1971 - December 1976
University of Cape Town
Field of study
  • Medicine

Publications

Publications (246)
Article
Full-text available
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19) continues its significant health and economic impact globally. Despite the success of spike-protein vaccines in preventing severe disease, long-lasting protection against emerging variants and the prevention of breakthrough infections and transmission remain elusive. We generate...
Article
Previous reports have shown that IL‐6 and IFN‐⍺ induce distinct transcriptomic and morphological changes in microglia. Here, we demonstrate that IL‐6 increases tissue surveillance, migration and phagocytosis in primary murine microglia, whereas IFN‐⍺ inhibits these functions. Our results provide a crucial link between transcriptome and function. It...
Article
Advances in single‐cell level analytical techniques, especially cytometric approaches, have led to profound innovation in biomedical research, particularly in the field of clinical immunology. This has resulted in an expansion of high‐dimensional data, posing great challenges for comprehensive and unbiased analysis. Conventional manual analysis is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Infiltrating monocytes play a dual role in central nervous system (CNS) diseases, both driving and attenuating inflammation. However, it is unclear how metabolic pathways preferentially fuel protective or pathogenic processes and whether these can be therapeutically targeted to enhance or inhibit these opposing functions. Here, we employed single-c...
Article
Full-text available
Microglia are the innate myeloid cells of the central nervous system (CNS) parenchyma, functionally implicated in almost every defined neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorder. Current understanding of disease pathogenesis for many neuropathologies is limited and/or lacks reliable diagnostic markers, vaccines, and treatments. With the incre...
Article
Full-text available
Natural killer (NK) cells are cytotoxic lymphocytes important for viral defense. West Nile virus (WNV) infection of the central nervous system (CNS) causes marked recruitment of bone marrow (BM)-derived monocytes, T cells and NK cells, resulting in severe neuroinflammation and brain damage. Despite substantial numbers of NK cells in the CNS, their...
Article
Full-text available
CD8+ T cells are critical to the adaptive immune response against viral pathogens. However, overwhelming antigen exposure can result in their exhaustion, characterised by reduced effector function, failure to clear virus, and the upregulation of inhibitory receptors, including programmed cell death 1 (PD-1). However, exhausted T cell responses can...
Article
Objective Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of global illness and death, most commonly caused by cigarette smoke. The mechanisms of pathogenesis remain poorly understood, limiting the development of effective therapies. The gastrointestinal microbiome has been implicated in chronic lung diseases via the gut-lung axis, bu...
Preprint
Advances in single-cell level analytical techniques, especially cytometric approaches, have led to profound innovation in biomedical research, particularly in the field of clinical immunology. This has resulted in an expansion of high-dimensional data, posing great challenges for comprehensive and unbiased analysis. Conventional manual analysis is...
Article
Full-text available
Arthritogenic alphaviruses are positive-strand RNA viruses that cause debilitating musculoskeletal diseases affecting millions worldwide. A recent discovery identified the four-and-a-half-LIM domain protein 1 splice variant A (FHL1A) as a crucial host factor interacting with the hypervariable domain (HVD) of chikungunya virus (CHIKV) nonstructural...
Preprint
Objective: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of global illness and death, most commonly caused by cigarette smoke. The mechanisms of pathogenesis remain poorly understood, limiting the development of effective therapies. The gastrointestinal microbiome has been implicated in chronic lung diseases via the gut-lung axis, b...
Article
Full-text available
Regulatory T cells (Treg) maintain immune homeostasis due to their anti‐inflammatory functions. They can be generated either centrally in the thymus or in peripheral organs. Metabolites such as short chain fatty acids produced by intestinal microbiota can induce peripheral Treg differentiation, by activating G‐protein‐coupled‐receptors like GPR109A...
Preprint
Full-text available
Advances in single cell analysis, especially cytometric approaches, have profoundly innovated immunological research. This has resulted in an expansion of high dimensional data, posing great challenges for comprehensive and unbiased analysis. Conventional manual analysis thus becomes untenable, while most computational methods lack flexibility and...
Article
Full-text available
Bone marrow (BM)-derived monocytes induce inflammation and tissue damage in a range of pathologies. In particular, in a mouse model of West Nile virus (WNV) encephalitis (WNE), nitric oxide-producing, Ly6Chi inflammatory monocytes from the BM are recruited to the central nervous system (CNS) and contribute to lethal immune pathology. Reducing the m...
Article
For many patients with T cell lymphomas (TCL), sustained clinical benefit with standard treatment options is elusive. Myeloid cells, such as monocytes, dendritic cells and macrophages, readily accumulate in tumors, whereby they support tumor progression. The ability to harness the capability of myeloid cells to penetrate into tumors, and to subsequ...
Article
Full-text available
Arthritogenic alphaviruses such as Ross River virus (RRV) and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) are responsible for large-scale epidemics that cause debilitating acute and chronic musculoskeletal diseases. MXRA8 was recently discovered as an entry receptor for multiple alphaviruses including CHIKV, RRV, Mayaro virus (MAYV), and O’nyong-nyong virus (ONNV)....
Article
Full-text available
As the resident parenchymal myeloid population in the central nervous system (CNS), microglia are strategically positioned to respond to neurotropic virus invasion and have been implicated in promoting both disease resolution and progression in the acute and post-infectious phase of virus encephalitis. In a mouse model of West Nile virus encephalit...
Preprint
Full-text available
Regulatory T cells (Treg) maintain immune homeostasis due to their anti-inflammatory functions. They can be generated either centrally in the thymus or in peripheral organs. Metabolites such as short chain fatty acids produced by intestinal microbiota can induce peripheral Treg differentiation, by activating G-protein-coupled-receptors like GPR109A...
Article
Full-text available
Microglia and bone marrow-derived monocytes are key elements of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation, both capable of enhancing and dampening immune-mediated pathology. However, the study-specific focus on individual cell types, disease models or experimental approaches has limited our ability to infer common and disease-specific responses. Th...
Article
Full-text available
Although ocular manifestations are reported in patients with COVID-19, consensus on ocular tropism of SARS-CoV-2 is lacking. Here, we infect K18-hACE2 transgenic mice with SARS-CoV-2 using various routes. We observe ocular manifestation and retinal inflammation with production of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the eyes of intranasally (IN)-infected...
Article
Full-text available
The sphingolipids galactosylceramide (GalCer), sulfatide (ST) and sphingomyelin (SM) are essential for myelin stability and function. GalCer and ST are synthesized mostly from C22‐C24 ceramides, generated by Ceramide Synthase 2 (CerS2). To clarify the requirement for C22‐C24 sphingolipid synthesis in myelin biosynthesis and stability, we generated...
Article
Full-text available
Psoriasis has long been associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); however, a causal link is yet to be established. Here, we demonstrate that imiquimod-induced psoriasis (IMQ-pso) in mice disrupts gut homeostasis, characterized by increased proportions of colonic CX3CR1hi macrophages, altered cytokine production, and bacterial dysbiosis. Gut...
Article
Full-text available
Secretory IgA is a key mucosal component ensuring host-microbiota mutualism. Here we use nutritional geometry modelling in mice fed 10 different macronutrient-defined, isocaloric diets, and identify dietary protein as the major driver of secretory IgA production. Protein-driven secretory IgA induction is not mediated by T-cell-dependent pathways or...
Article
Inflammatory monocytes are a major component of the cellular infiltrate in acutely rejecting human kidney allografts. Since immune-modifying nanoparticles (IMPs) bind to circulating inflammatory monocytes via the specific scavenger receptor MARCO, causing diversion to the spleen and subsequent apoptosis, we investigated the therapeutic potential of...
Article
Mapping the dynamics of immune cell populations over time or disease‐course is key to understanding immunopathogenesis and devising putative interventions. We present TrackSOM, a novel method for delineating cellular populations and tracking their development over a time‐ or disease‐course cytometry datasets. We demonstrate TrackSOM‐enabled elucida...
Preprint
The sphingolipids galactosylceramide (GalCer), sulfatide (ST) and sphingomyelin (SM) are essential for myelin stability and function. GalCer and ST are synthesized mostly from C22-C24 ceramides, generated by Ceramide Synthase 2 (CerS2). To clarify the requirement for C22-C24 sphingolipid synthesis in myelin lipid biosynthesis and stability, we gene...
Article
Full-text available
Respiratory tract infection with SARS-CoV-2 results in varying immunopathology underlying COVID-19. We examine cellular, humoral and cytokine responses covering 382 immune components in longitudinal blood and respiratory samples from hospitalized COVID-19 patients. SARS-CoV-2-specific IgM, IgG, IgA are detected in respiratory tract and blood, howev...
Article
Full-text available
Compared to the original ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2, the Delta variant of concern has shown increased transmissibility and resistance toward COVID-19 vaccines and therapies. However, the pathogenesis of the disease associated with Delta is still not clear. In this study, using K18-hACE2 transgenic mice, we assessed the pathogenicity of the Delt...
Article
Full-text available
PLX5622 is a CSF-1R inhibitor and microglia-depleting reagent, widely used to investigate the biology of this central nervous system (CNS)-resident myeloid population, but the indirect or off-target effects of this agent remain largely unexplored. In a murine model of severe neuroinflammation induced by West Nile virus encephalitis (WNE), we showed...
Article
Full-text available
Dietary fiber supports healthy gut bacteria and their production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which promote anti-inflammatory cell development, in particular, regulatory T cells. It is thus beneficial in many diseases, including influenza infection. While disruption of the gut microbiota by antibiotic treatment aggravates West Nile Virus (WNV...
Article
Full-text available
Aim: Imaging-Mass-Cytometry (IMC) affords simultaneous immune-labelling/imaging of multiple antigens in the same tissue. Methods utilising multiplex data beyond co-registration are lacking. This study developed and applied an innovative spatial analysis workflow for multiplex imaging data to IMC data determined from cardiac tissues and revealed th...
Article
Full-text available
In neurological diseases, the actions of microglia, the resident myeloid cells of the CNS parenchyma, may diverge from, or intersect with, those of recruited monocytes to drive immune-mediated pathology. However, defining the precise roles of each cell type has historically been impeded by the lack of discriminating markers and experimental systems...
Preprint
Full-text available
Although the respiratory tract is the primary site of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the ensuing immunopathology, respiratory immune responses are understudied and urgently needed to understand mechanisms underlying COVID-19 disease pathogenesis. We collected paired longitudinal blood and respiratory tract samples (endotracheal aspirate, sputum or pleura...
Preprint
Full-text available
Although the respiratory tract is the primary site of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the ensuing immunopathology, respiratory immune responses are understudied and urgently needed to understand mechanisms underlying COVID-19 disease pathogenesis. We collected paired longitudinal blood and respiratory tract samples (endotracheal aspirate, sputum or pleura...
Article
Full-text available
Background Differentiating infiltrating myeloid cells from resident microglia in neuroinflammatory disease is challenging, because bone marrow-derived inflammatory monocytes infiltrating the inflamed brain adopt a ‘microglia-like’ phenotype. This precludes the accurate identification of either cell type without genetic manipulation, which is import...
Article
Full-text available
While diet modulates immunity, its impact on B cell ontogeny remains unclear. Using mixture modelling, a large-scale isocaloric dietary cohort mouse study identified carbohydrate as a major driver of B cell development and function. Increasing dietary carbohydrate increased B cell proportions in spleen, mesenteric lymph node and Peyer’s patches, an...
Preprint
Full-text available
Mapping the dynamics of immune cell populations over time or disease-course is key to understanding immunopathogenesis and devising putative interventions. We present TrackSOM, an algorithm which delineates cellular populations and tracks their development over a time- or disease-course of cytometry datasets. We demonstrate TrackSOM-enabled elucida...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Differentiating infiltrating myeloid cells from resident microglia in neuroinflammatory disease is challenging, because bone marrow-derived inflammatory monocytes infiltrating the inflamed brain adopt a ‘microglia-like’ phenotype. This precludes the accurate identification of either cell type without genetic manipulation, which is impor...
Article
As the size and complexity of high‐dimensional cytometry data continue to expand, comprehensive, scalable, and methodical computational analysis approaches are essential. Yet, contemporary clustering and dimensionality reduction tools alone are insufficient to analyze or reproduce analyses across large numbers of samples, batches, or experiments. M...
Preprint
Cell counting is a critical step to determine the number of live leukocytes (white blood cells, WBC) and erythrocytes (red blood cells, RBC) per femur, and is accurately performed using a microscope and haemocytometer. This step allows enables the distribution of a specific number of cells per well in the staining plate. Some researchers prefer to...
Article
Full-text available
SARS-CoV-2 causes a spectrum of COVID-19 disease, the immunological basis of which remains ill-defined. We analysed 85 SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals at acute and/or convalescent timepoints, up to 102 days post-symptom onset, quantifying 184 immunological parameters. Acute COVID-19 presented with high levels of IL-6, IL-18 and IL-10 and broad acti...
Article
Motivation Many ‘automated gating’ algorithms now exist to cluster cytometry and single cell sequencing data into discrete populations. Comparative algorithm evaluations on benchmark datasets rely either on a single performance metric, or a few metrics considered independently of one another. However, single metrics emphasise different aspects of c...
Article
Microglia and bone marrow-derived monocytes are key elements of CNS inflammation, both capable of enhancing and dampening immune-mediated pathology, as highlighted by their phenotypic and functional heterogeneity across disease. However, the study-specific focus on individual cell types, disease models or experimental approaches has compartmentaliz...
Article
Full-text available
Inflammation of the brain parenchyma is characteristic of neurodegenerative, autoimmune, and neuroinflammatory diseases. During this process, microglia, which populate the embryonic brain and become a permanent sentinel myeloid population, are inexorably joined by peripherally derived monocytes, recruited by the central nervous system. These cells...
Preprint
Full-text available
Secretory IgA (sIgA) is a key mucosal component ensuring host-microbiota mutualism. Using nutritional geometry modelling in mice fed 10 different macronutrient-defined, isocaloric diets, we identified dietary protein as the major driver of sIgA production. Protein-driven sIgA induction was not mediated by T cell-dependent pathways or changes in gut...
Preprint
Full-text available
As the size and complexity of high-dimensional cytometry data continue to expand, comprehensive, scalable, and methodical computational analysis approaches are essential. Yet, contemporary clustering and dimensionality reduction tools alone are insufficient to analyze or reproduce analyses across large numbers of samples, batches, or experiments. M...
Article
In conventional fluorescence cytometry, each fluorophore present in a panel is measured in a target detector, through the use of wide band‐pass optical filters. In contrast, spectral cytometry uses a large number of detectors with narrow band‐pass filters to measure a fluorophore's signal across the spectrum, creating a more detailed fluorescent si...
Article
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory condition of the skin, autoimmune in nature, that affects millions of people worldwide. It is driven by IL-17-producing CD4 and γδ-T cells and targeted by current anti-IL-17 or anti-IL-23 monoclonal antibody therapies. These treatments are expensive, increase the risk of opportunistic infections and do not specif...
Article
Full-text available
Zika virus (ZIKV) has recently emerged as an important human pathogen due to the strong evidence that it causes disease of the central nervous system, particularly microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. The pathogenesis of disease, including mechanisms of neuroinvasion, may include both invasion via the blood-brain barrier and via peripheral (in...
Article
Full-text available
Signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) 1 is critical for cellular responses to type I interferons (IFN-Is), with the capacity to determine the outcome of viral infection. We previously showed that while wildtype (WT) mice develop mild disease and survive infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), LCMV infection of...
Article
Full-text available
Arthritogenic alphaviruses cause debilitating inflammatory disease, and current therapies are restricted to palliative approaches. Here, we show that following monocyte-driven muscle inflammation, tissue recovery is associated with the accumulation of CX3CR1+ macrophages in the muscle. Modulating inflammatory monocyte infiltration using immune-modi...
Article
Background & aims: Celiac disease could be treated, and potentially cured, by restoring T-cell tolerance to gliadin. We investigated the safety and efficacy of negatively charged, 500 nm, poly(lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles encapsulating gliadin protein (TIMP-GLIA) in 3 mouse models of celiac disease. Uptake of these nanoparticles by antigen-...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Until the end of the twentieth century, Zika virus (ZIKV) was thought to cause a mostly mild, self-limiting disease in humans. However, as the geographic distribution of ZIKV has shifted, so too has its pathogenicity. Modern-day ZIKV infection is now known to cause encephalitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, and Guillain-Barré...
Chapter
Mass cytometry is a new high-throughput technology that is becoming a cornerstone in immunology and cell biology research. With technological advancement, the number of cellular characteristics cytometry can simultaneously quantify grows, making analysis increasingly computationally onerous. In this paper, we investigate the potential of dimensiona...
Chapter
The hematopoietic system produces erythrocytes (red blood cells), leukocytes (white blood cells), and thrombocytes (platelets) throughout the life of an organism. Long-lived hematopoietic stem cells give rise to early progenitors with multi-lineage potential that progressively differentiate into lineage-specific progenitors. Following lineage commi...
Article
Full-text available
Surface-functionalized nanomaterials can act as theranostic agents that detect disease and track biological processes using hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Candidate materials are sparse however, requiring spinful nuclei with long spin-lattice relaxation (T1) and spin-dephasing times (T2), together with a reservoir of electrons to...
Article
In many scientific disciplines, the advent of new high-throughput technologies is giving rise to vast quantities of high-dimensional time-series data. A common requirement is to identify clusters of data-points with similar characteristics in this experimental data, and track their development over time. In this article we present ChronoClust, a no...
Article
Inflammation associated with autoimmune diseases and chronic injury is an initiating event that leads to tissue degeneration and dysfunction. Inflammatory monocytes and neutrophils systemically circulate and enter inflamed tissue, and pharmaceutical based targeting of these cells has not substantially improved outcomes and has had side effects. Her...
Article
Full-text available
Current treatment of severe malaria and associated cerebral malaria (CM) and respiratory distress syndromes are directed primarily at the parasite. Targeting the parasite has only partial efficacy in advanced infection, as neurological damage and respiratory distress are due to accumulation of host blood cells in the brain microvasculature and lung...
Article
Full-text available
Autoimmune diseases, such as celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes, are leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. In these disease states, immune regulatory mechanisms fail that result in T and B cell-mediated destruction of self-tissues. The known role of T cells in mediating autoimmune diseases has led to t...
Article
Anti-CD4 or anti-CD8α Ab-mediated depletion strategies are widely used to determine the role of T cell subsets. However, surface expression of CD4 and CD8α is not limited to T cells and occurs on other leukocyte populations as well. Using both unbiased t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding of flow cytometry data and conventional gating strate...
Chapter
The immune system consists of a complex network of cells, all expressing a wide range of surface and/or intracellular proteins. Using flow cytometry, these cells can be analyzed by labeling with fluorophore-conjugated antibodies. The recent expansion of fluorescence flow cytometry technology, in conjunction with the ever-expanding understanding of...
Article
Full-text available
Effective CD8⁺ T cell responses play an important role in determining the course of a viral infection. Overwhelming antigen exposure can result in suboptimal CD8⁺ T cell responses, leading to chronic infection. This altered CD8⁺ T cell differentiation state, termed exhaustion, is characterized by reduced effector function, upregulation of inhibitor...
Preprint
Surface-functionalized nanomaterials can act as theranostic agents that detect disease and track biological processes using hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Candidate materials are sparse however, requiring spinful nuclei with long spin-lattice relaxation (T1) and spin-dephasing times (T2), together with a reservoir of electrons to...
Article
Full-text available
Mosquito-borne viruses can cause severe inflammatory diseases and there are limited therapeutic solutions targeted specifically at virus-induced inflammation. Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a re-emerging alphavirus responsible for several outbreaks worldwide in the past decade, causes debilitating joint inflammation and severe pain. Here, we show that...
Article
Full-text available
Background In this work, we develop a theoretical model of an auto immune response. This is based on modifications of standard second messenger trigger models using both signalling pathways and diffusion and a macro level dynamic systems approximation to the response of a triggering agent such as a virus, bacteria or environmental toxin. Results W...
Article
Full-text available
Background In this work, we develop a theoretical model that explains the survival data in West Nile Virus infection. Results We build a model based on three cell populations in an infected host; the collateral damage cells, the infected dividing cell, and the infected non-dividing cells. T cell-mediated lysis of each of these populations is depen...
Article
Immune status changes during pregnancy, with pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory contexts at different stages, making pregnant women potentially more susceptible to various infections. Infection by Zika virus during pregnancy can cause developmental damage to the fetus, and the altered immune response during pregnancy could contribute to disease...
Article
Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) encephalitis (HSE) is the most common fatal sporadic encephalitis in developed countries. There is evidence from HSE animal models that not only direct virus-mediated damage caused but also the host’s immune response contributes to the high mortality of the disease. Chemokines modulate and orchestrate this immune...
Article
The heme enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) is a critical immune regulatory enzyme capable of signalling for immune suppression in diverse pathological settings including chronic inflammation, infection and cancer. During inflammation, IDO1 is expressed within activated innate immune cells that also produce the reactive oxygen species (ROS...
Article
Full-text available
Simulation code for a model of the adaptive immune response seen in flavivirus infections is used to explain the immunopathological consequences seen in West Nile Virus virus (WNV) infections. We use a model that specifically handles the differences in how the virus infects resting cells, the G 0 state, versus dividing cells, the G 1 state, which i...
Article
Sensitization of the humoral immune response to invading viruses and production of antiviral antibodies forms part of the host antiviral repertoire. Paradoxically, for a number of viral pathogens, under certain conditions, antibodies provide an attractive means of enhanced virus entry and replication in a number of cell types. Known as antibody-dep...
Article
IDO1 (indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1) is a member of a unique class of mammalian haem dioxygenases that catalyse the oxidative catabolism of the least-abundant essential amino acid, L-Trp (L-tryptophan), along the kynurenine pathway. Significant increases in knowledge have been recently gained with respect to understanding the fundamental biochemist...
Chapter
This chapter outlines innate and adaptive immune changes in the brain associated with fl avivirus encephalitis. It reviews the data from various currently used models in vivo and in vitro and highlights some of the issues with interpretation of these. In the approaches to disease, it is argued that a carefully timed immunological intervention is po...
Article
Recent approaches using nanoparticles engineered for immune regulation have yielded promising results in preclinical models of disease. The number of nanoparticle therapies is growing, fueled by innovations in nanotechnology and advances in understanding of the underlying pathogenesis of immune-mediated diseases. In particular, recent mechanistic i...
Article
Full-text available
In this work, we discuss the development of simulation code for a model of the cross-reactive adaptive immune response seen in flavivirus infections. The model specifically addresses flavivi-rus pathogen virulence in G 0 vs. G 1 cell states. The MHC-I upregulation of resting cells (G 0 state) allows the T-cells generated for flavivirus peptide anti...
Article
IRF8 (interferon-regulatory factor-8) plays a critical role in regulating myeloid cell differentiation. However, the role of this transcription factor in the development of Ly6C+ inflammatory monocytes and their migration to the infected brain has not been examined. We have previously shown that West Nile virus (WNV) infection of wild-type (WT) mic...
Article
Full-text available
Over the last three decades it has become increasingly clear that monocytes, originally thought to have fixed, stereotypic responses to foreign stimuli, mediate exquisitely balanced protective and pathogenic roles in disease and immunity. This balance is crucial in core functional organs, such as the central nervous system (CNS), where minor change...
Article
Purpose To investigate if West Nile virus (WNV) infection of human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells induces differential expression of mRNA and proteins for cytokines important for leucocyte recruitment (e.g. CCL5) and integrity of the outer blood retinal barrier (BRB) (e.g. TNF). Methods Primary human RPE cells (P3‐5) were cultured until a c...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose To investigate the modulatory effect of rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) on human corneal epithelial cells (HCE-T) stimulated with pro-inflammatory cytokines interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) in an in vitro co-cultured model. Methods HCE-T alone and co-cultured with MSC were stimulated with IFN-γ/...
Article
Full-text available
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of disorders that are characterized by chronic, uncontrolled inflammation in the intestinal mucosa. Although the aetiopathogenesis is poorly understood, it is widely believed that IBD stems from a dysregulated immune response towards otherwise harmless commensal bacteria. Chemokines induce and enhance inf...
Article
Full-text available
Inflammatory monocyte-derived effector cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of numerous inflammatory diseases. However, no treatment option exists that is capable of modulating these cells specifically. We show that infused negatively charged, immune-modifying microparticles (IMPs), derived from polystyrene, microdiamonds, or biodegrada...
Article
Full-text available
Lipocalin 2 (Lcn2) is a bacteriostatic factor produced during the innate immune response to bacterial infection. Whether Lcn2 has a function in viral infection is unknown. We investigated the regulation and function of Lcn2 in the central nervous system (CNS) of mice during West Nile virus (WNV) encephalitis. Lcn2 mRNA and protein were induced in t...
Article
Autoimmunity is a significant health concern with diseases like type 1 diabetes (T1D) rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and multiple sclerosis (MS) drastically increasing in prevalence. The precise trigger for autoimmunity is unknown, although genetics clearly plays a significant role. However, low concordance rates in...
Article
Full-text available
Mosquito-borne flaviviruses are a major current and emerging threat, affecting millions of people worldwide. Global climate change, combined with increasing proximity of humans to animals and mosquito vectors by expansion into natural habitats, coupled with the increase in international travel, have resulted in significant spread and concomitant in...
Conference Paper
Viral sexually transmitted infections (STI) are a significant health problem worldwide. Recently, there has been enhanced focus on Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), as a STI model to understand anti-viral immune responses at mucosal surfaces. Here we report that HSV-2 infection is accompanied by massive induction of IFN- γ in two waves, at day 2...
Article
We identified IRF8 as a constitutive and IFN-γ-stimulated nuclear factor in microglia of the CNS. IRF8 is a transcription factor with a key role in the cellular response to IFN-γ but is also pivotal in myeloid cell differentiation. Here we employed IRF8 KO mice to determine the role of IRF8 in microglial development and function in the healthy CNS...

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