Research Areas:
Fields of Interest
The focus of the current research in our laboratory is aimed to
investigate novel molecular aspects of innate immune response in autoimmunity
and inflammatory diseases.
Our primary field of interest
is the role of triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 (TREM-1) in arthritis,
lupus (SLE) and atherosclerosis.
We've found a novel pathway for ameliorating the LPS-induced
up-regulation of macrophage membrane TREM-1 expression and enhancing TREM-1
shedding via a TLR-9-mediated pathway (Innate Immunity 19(6):623-30,
2013).
We've shown that plasma levels of soluble TREM-1 (sTREM-1) positively
correlate with disease activity in patients with newly diagnosed DMARD-naïve
early rheumatoid arthritis (Eur J Clin Invest 2015; 45: 557 – 564).
In another study, we've shown that plasma sTREM-1 correlate with
thrombotic events in patients with the anti-phospholipid (Arthritis Res Ther2019; 21: 10).
Recently, we've shown that plasma sTREM-1 level predicts acute
coronary syndrome in patients who present to the emergency department with a
complaint of chest pain (submitted for publication).
We also found that urinary sTREM-1 correlated with active nephritis
in lupus patients whereas its plasma level correlated with the systemic disease
activity.
In our current research we use a rodent model of monosodium urate
(MSU) crystal-induced arthritis and found that sTREM-1 exerts anti-inflammatory
effects by decreasing PMN influx as well as inhibiting the production of TNFα,
IL-8, CCL3 whereas the level of the anti-inflammatory cytokine TGFβ is not
affected by sTREM-1. We also show that Syk inhibition ameliorates the
pro-inflammatory effects of MSU crystals and agonist TREM-1 antibody (in
vitro). We aim to determine the effect of TREM-1 on inflammasome activation. These
studies may pave the road towards novel drugs for the treatment of gout
(unpublished data).