Our laboratory investigates the interaction of dietary factors with the gut microbiota and the host, especially with the host’s immune system, in the context of cardiovascular and renal disease. Arterial hypertension and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are of particular interest, as both conditions are associated with a significantly increased cardiovascular risk.
Our research aims to understand the role of tissue-resident cells of the innate immune system in the prevention of chronic inflammatory diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus and inflammatory bowel disease. Our goal is to identify mechanisms that may inhibit the transition from homeostasis to chronic inflammatory disease and to determine the role of tissue-resident cells of the innate immune system in this process.
Our lab studies the role of immune cells and inflammatory processes in the liver. Infiltration and activation of immune cells play an important role during the development of acute and chronic liver diseases, but the exact molecular and cellular mechanisms leading to the development of liver inflammation have not been fully elucidated until now. We are exploring the inflammatory processes during acute liver failure, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and steatohepatitis (NASH), liver cirrhosis and liver cancer in order to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Furthermore, a better understanding of how both pro- and anti-inflammatory pathways can disrupt the homeostatic processes of a healthy liver is critical for the prevention of liver diseases in the first place.
Resilience to infections is equally defined by the host’s ability to clear the infecting pathogen and to resolve and mitigate secondary injury, and thus to restore and maintain tissue homeostasis. These physiological processes of resolution and repair, however, intersect with pathogenic responses in chronic organ fibrosis.
Biomarkers play a central role in detecting chronic inflammatory diseases before irreversible tissue damage occurs. These measurable, ideally disease-specific, indicators can be detected in the organism even before the onset of symptoms. For example, neutrophil elastase (NE), a serine protease secreted by activated neutrophils and essential for the innate immune response to pathogen infections, already serves as a biomarker for certain chronic inflammatory diseases of the respiratory and digestive tracts
Our laboratory focuses on the mechanisms involved in maintaining oxalate homeostasis. Oxalate is a component of various foods, found in different vegetables, nuts, but also in tea and coffee. High urinary oxalate concentrations lead to kidney stones, the second most common kidney disease after hypertension. Oxalate represents the most common component of kidney stones.
Type 2 immune responses promote tissue homeostasis as well as tissue remodeling and protect against infections with macroparasites but can become detrimental when triggered against non-infectious environmental stimuli