Nita Salzman
Medical College of Wisconsin, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
The gut holds trillions of bacteria right next to the immune system, yet it usually stays calm rather than inflamed. How the body keeps this peace is only partly understood.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
- Topics
complement component 3
complement system
intestinal homeostasis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Identify which intestinal cells, including enterocytes, Paneth cells and fibroblasts, produce complement component 3 (C3) in the distal small intestine of mice colonized with the commensal bacterium Enterococcus faecalis.
- Determine how specifically C3 binds bacteria in the gut contents of the distal small intestine, and whether this binding differs among resident bacterial species.
- Investigate how C3 in the distal small intestine regulates bacteria and immune cells to maintain non-inflammatory host–microbe homeostasis.
More about the research
Some of the work is done by quiet, non-inflammatory defenses at the gut lining, and many of these remain unexplored.
Why it matters
This basic research shows how the gut tolerates its normal bacteria without inflammation, assigning a new, non-inflammatory role to the immune protein C3. Understanding this defense could eventually inform future mechanistic studies of how the intestine maintains health. It may also clarify what goes wrong when the balance between gut microbes and the host breaks down.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Arianne Theiss
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Define how mitochondrial dysfunction expands CD74-positive inflammatory Paneth cells and disrupts gut balance, using mice lacking the mitochondrial protein PHB1 only in Paneth cells, which develop spontaneous ileitis.
Louis Cohen
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Profile the hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cell and progenitor populations that are associated with treatment-resistant Crohn's disease, drawing on patients who received autologous stem cell transplantation.
Melinda Engevik
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify the bacterial compounds produced directly from the breakdown of mucin glycoproteins by gut bacteria, using metabolomics.
The school
Medical College of Wisconsin: 17 labs on PI Pages, $360M a year on research, 44 research doctorates a year.
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