Immune Deviation and Disease

The Wechsler and CURED Laboratory has several translational research projects focused on characterizing the pathogenesis of EoE and identifying novel predictors of treatment response, particularly diet elimination. Notably, the immune response in EoE involves an interaction between T-lymphocytes, mast cells, eosinophils, and epithelial cells. The lab utilizes a large clinical database, biorepository of tissue and blood on which they perform single cell and bulk transcriptome analysis, blood/plasma-based assays, immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence with semi-automated image capture/analysis. In addition, they use human primary cells and murine cells to perform ex vivo/in vitro immune cell culture and 3-D modeling of esophageal epithelium to identify mucosal factors critical to the pathogenesis of EoE-associated inflammation with regards to the interaction of these cell types, and the antigen-specific nature of the disease.