University of Edinburgh/MRC Centre for Inflammation Research

炎症是一种高度进化的防御系统，可以通过创伤后的疼痛、红色和肿胀在皮肤上识别，它有助于我们的身体对抗入侵的微生物并修复损伤。然而，如果炎症没有得到适当的控制，它可能会导致严重的疾病，如哮喘和关节炎等疾病。长期(或慢性)炎症性疾病是英国的主要杀手之一，例如：心脏和血管疾病、肺和呼吸道疾病(例如与吸烟有关)、慢性肝病(例如与病毒感染、酗酒等有关)和慢性肾脏疾病。如果不加以控制，炎症还会导致组织瘢痕形成(称为纤维化)，从而严重破坏肺、肾和肝脏等器官的功能。炎症也越来越被认为是癌症发展的一个重要因素。虽然这些疾病似乎没有关联，但它们的发展和进展都有共同的事件，这意味着通过了解炎症的生物学，我们将能够开发新的方法来治疗影响肺、心脏、肝脏或肾脏的疾病。此外，我们正在开发炎症和疤痕的成像方法，使我们能够了解疾病是如何发展的，并测试治疗的有效性，而不需要依靠活检(组织样本)。MRC-UOE炎症研究中心采用多学科方法研究炎症障碍的潜在机制；目的是设计新的治疗方法，以及监测和成像这些重要情况的新方法。

Inflammation, recognisable in the skin by soreness, redness and swelling following trauma, is a highly evolved defence system that helps our bodies fight invading micro-organisms and repair damage. However if inflammation is not controlled properly it may cause significant illness as is the case in diseases such as asthma and arthritis. Long term (or chronic) inflammatory diseases are amongst the major killers in the UK, for example: Heart and vascular disease, lung and airway disease (for example associated with smoking), chronic liver disease (for example associated with viral infection, alcohol abuse etc) and chronic kidney disease. Unchecked, inflammation also leads to tissue scarring (termed fibrosis) which can critically disrupt the function of organs such as the lung, kidney and liver. Inflammation is also becoming increasingly recognised as an important factor in the development of cancer. Whilst these diseases appear unrelated, there are events common to their development and progression which means that by understanding the biology of inflammation we will be able to develop new approaches to treatment of conditions affecting the lung, heart, liver or kidney. Additionally, we are developing methods of imaging inflammation and scarring to enable us to see how disease develops and test the effectiveness of treatments, without recourse to taking biopsies (a tissue sample).The MRC-UoE Centre for Inflammation Research has a multi-disciplinary approach to the research of mechanisms underlying inflammatory disorders; with the aim of designing new treatments, and new methods to monitor and image these important conditions.