Protective and pathologic functions of macrophages induced by helminths

PROJECT NARRATIVE Helminth parasites infect approximately 2 billion people worldwide and represent a significant health and economic challenge. While multiple studies have demonstrated an essential role for lung macrophages in promoting protective immunity and initiating wound healing following infection, the specific macrophage populations and accessory cells that promote these pathways remain unknown. This proposal will combine hypothesis-driven experiments and state-of-the-art discovery based methodologies to investigate how tissue- and monocyte-derived lung macrophages cooperate with accessory cells to promote host protective responses following a helminth challenge.