B cell development, autoimmunity and immune regulation

我们的目标是了解免疫系统如何调节对自身和外来抗原的反应，包括B细胞在发育和个体发育过程中如何被选择，人类免疫缺陷的原因以及如何从这些见解可以帮助我们改善对抗原的正常免疫反应，以及免疫反应的失调如何导致系统性自身免疫疾病。我们对检查点受体激动剂如何用于抑制人类炎症和自身免疫性疾病有着长期的兴趣。最近，我们开始研究狼疮和其他自身免疫性肾脏疾病的免疫病理学，以改善诊断和分层患者，并测试新的治疗靶点。我们通过各种功能、遗传和治疗方法来解决这些问题。我们的实验使用转基因小鼠、分子工具和模型，这些工具和模型可用于跟踪细胞并验证对抗原的免疫应答、自身耐受和B细胞选择。我们使用基因靶向来模拟人类疾病，并深入了解新的机制，我们正在开发单细胞方法，包括空间成像，以模拟免疫反应和疾病的病理学。我们成立了一家大学衍生公司MIROBIO，将我们的发现转化为临床实践。

Our goal is to understand how the immune system regulates the response to self- and foreign antigens, including how B cells are selected during their development and ontogeny, the causes of human immunodeficiency and how insights from these can help us to improve the normal immune response to antigens, and how dysregulation of the immune response leads to systemic autoimmune disease. We have a longstanding interest in how checkpoint receptor agonists may be used to suppress inflammation and autoimmune disease in humans. More recently, we have started to investigate the immune pathology of lupus and other autoimmune kidney diseases, to improve diagnosis and stratify patients, and test new therapeutic targets. We address these questions with a variety of functional, genetic and therapeutic approaches. Our experiments use transgenic mice, molecular tools and models that can be used to track cells and characterise the immune response to antigens, self-tolerance and B cell selection. We use gene targeting to model human disease and gain insights into new mechanisms, and we are developing single-cell approaches, including spatial imaging, to characterise the immune response and the pathology of disease. We have formed a university spin-out company, MIROBIO, to translate our discoveries into clinical practice.