Mia Phillipson

Project summary

Inflammation and the formation of new blood vessels

Our immune system is essential for fighting infections, while uncontrolled inflammatory processes contribute to many common diseases. In autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, the immune system attacks and destroys the body’s own tissues.

 

At present, these diseases are generally treated rather than cured, through lifelong symptomatic treatment, such as insulin for diabetes, or through immunosuppressive therapy. A better understanding of how immune cells are activated is needed to develop new anti-inflammatory drugs. The first part of the research project aims to understand how immune cells are activated during inflammation and how they move from the bloodstream into tissues.

 

A new role for the immune system has been identified, in which certain immune cells stimulate the formation of new blood vessels to prevent oxygen deprivation and tissue death. The project recently found that immune cells were required to restore the vascular network in transplanted insulin-producing cells, known as islets of Langerhans, when these cells were transplanted into muscle tissue.

 

Diabetes can currently be cured only by transplanting insulin-producing cells into the liver. However, these islets eventually die because of inadequate formation of new blood vessels, and within a few years patients have to return to insulin injections. Based on the project’s findings, a clinical study has now been initiated in which islets are instead transplanted into muscle tissue. The second part of the project investigates how different immune cells find their way to areas with low oxygen levels and how they promote the formation of new blood vessels. This knowledge may lead to new ways of improving the survival of insulin-producing cells and treating diseases in which blood flow is impaired.

 

The ambition is to increase our understanding of the different roles played by immune cells, thereby making it possible to modulate the immune system to reduce disease or the rejection of transplanted tissue. Key priorities are to maintain a creative laboratory environment in which new hypotheses can be tested rapidly, to continuously expand our range of methods and in vivo models, to retain a strong translational focus, and to enable the project’s doctoral students to develop into successful researchers of the future.