The Steinberg Lab investigates the interface between the nervous and immune systems in the pathobiology of disease. The immune system has long been known to impact the nervous system function in health and disease through neuroinflammatory pathways. Importantly and conversely, neural circuits have more recently been shown to control inflammatory responses to infection, inflammation, and tissue injury through direct, structural interfaces between immune and nervous tissues. These cellular and molecular points of engagement are distributed across the body to serve important homeostatic functions. Their dysregulation, in turn, likely contributes to disease.
In the first, we investigate the fundamental interaction between immune and nervous system cells and molecules to better understand how the immune response maintains neuronal health and contributes to neurological diseases. Here, we have recently focused on programmed cell death pathways, such as pyroptosis.
In the second, we leverage the nervous system’s capacity to monitor and modulate immune responses to devise new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies using translational preclinical models.
