Arianne Theiss
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, causes long-lasting inflammation of the gut. Growing evidence suggests that faulty mitochondria, the cell's energy-producing structures, help drive this disease.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
inflammatory bowel disease
Crohn's disease
ileitis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Test whether mitochondrial reactive oxygen species drive the inflammatory Paneth cell subtype that protects young PHB1-deficient mice against acute Salmonella typhimurium infection but causes ileitis when persistent.
- Identify how IL-18, an immune signaling molecule, triggers mitochondrial signaling in Paneth cells, including TRAF6-dependent ubiquitin tagging of PHB1 and the resulting rise in mitochondrial ROS and CD74 expression.
More about the research
One focus is Paneth cells, specialized cells in the lining of the small intestine that release antimicrobial molecules and support the stem cells that renew the gut lining. In 20–50% of Crohn's disease patients, Paneth cells look abnormal and show reduced activity of mitochondrial genes. These patients tend to have worse outcomes and disrupted gut bacteria.
Why it matters
Crohn's disease and other forms of inflammatory bowel disease affect patients for life, and many have abnormal Paneth cells linked to worse outcomes. Showing how mitochondrial signaling in these cells shifts from protective to harmful could reveal how gut balance breaks down in IBD. It may point to steps in the IL-18–mitochondria pathway that future treatments could target.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ling-shiang Chuang
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Genetics
Profile perianal fistula tissue from Crohn's disease patients with single-cell multiome ATAC plus transcriptome and spatial transcriptomics, which measure open DNA, gene activity and location cell by cell.
Pawel Kiela
University of Arizona, AZ·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether loss of NAD+ or excess PARylation by the enzyme PARP1 is the main driver of experimental colitis, using PARP1 knockout mice and drug inhibition.
Sojin Shikano
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Characterize how strongly the TM4 peptide, a nanoparticle-forming copy of GPR15's fourth membrane-spanning segment, blocks GPR15L-triggered signaling through the GPR15 receptor in cell-based assays.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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