Research

Our Research Goal is to discover and develop novel effective therapies for Autoimmune Uveitis.

What is uveitis? The eye has mechanisms to prevent inflammation. These mechanisms can be circumvented in the case of infection, resulting in ocular inflammation or uveitis. 

If the inflammation persists in the absence of infection it can become chronic and is considered autoimmune or inflammatoy disease. Autoimmune disease is when your own immune system targets your own tissue. 

Our lab is focused on understanding the ocular mechanisms that prevent inflammation, these mechanisms are collectively described as ocular immune privilege. Ocular immune privilege is an observation made by Peter Medawar in 1948.

Because the eye is clear we can non-invasively view an immune response happening in real-time. The use of fluorescent regulatory T cells emerge in the eye as soon as uveitis begins (Muhammad, et al., 2020, JA).