Edward Pearce
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
When a parasitic worm invades the gut, the body has to do two things at once: fight off the invader and keep the damaged tissue intact. Immune cells are only part of that response.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
- Topics
stromal cells
type 2 immunity
Th2 cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Determine how multipotent progenitor cells, stromal cells in gut-associated fat that can become fibroblasts or fat cells, shape mouse resistance to the intestinal worm Heligmosomoides polygyrus, using RNA-seq, ATAC-seq and loss-of-function mouse models.
- Test whether stromal-cell alarm signals IL-33 and TSLP and T-cell signals Amphiregulin and TGFβ let Th2 cells and stromal cells activate each other, using mice that lack these molecules.
- Define the function, antigen specificity, fat metabolism and migration of resident Th2 cells in mesenteric fat, using flow cytometry, ex vivo imaging of cell movement and functional assays.
- Assess whether stromal extracellular matrix, the protein mesh between cells, helps trap parasites in granulomas and keeps tissue intact, using tissue stiffness measurements and parasitological techniques.
More about the research
Stromal cells, the connective-tissue cells that form the scaffolding of organs, also send and receive signals that shape how tissues resist infection and repair themselves. This project asks how stromal cells and immune cells work together to protect the intestine. It uses the fat tissue that surrounds the gut as a site where this teamwork appears to happen.
Why it matters
Stromal cells and the matrix they produce go wrong in allergy, impaired wound healing, fibrosis and cancer. Learning how stromal cells and T cells cooperate to protect tissue could reveal points where stromal biology might be adjusted to treat these conditions. It could also clarify how the body resists intestinal parasites and why the same tissue interactions sometimes end in a loss of normal tissue function.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ari B Molofsky
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how early injury-associated myofibroblasts, which depend on TGFβ signaling and macrophages, limit brain lesion size and loss of function in mouse models of brain injury.
Elia D Tait Wojno
University of Washington, WA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how Notch signaling inside basophils controls where they sit in the large intestine and how they contact CD4+ T cells during Trichuris muris worm infection, including a role for alpha4 integrin.
Ryan Nelson
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Define how allergen-specific regulatory T cells that stay in the lung suppress Th2 resident memory T cells, characterizing their location, persistence, suppressive strength and gene expression in a house dust mite mouse model of asthma.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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