Jun Nagai, PhD

Extracellular nucleotides and lipid mediators are rapidly released from cells in response to stimulation and can either prevent or facilitate type 2 allergic inflammation through GPCR signaling, but the mechanisms are incompletely understood.  My life-long pursuit is to understand why and how these mediators are released and to translate such knowledge into the new diagnostic, prognostic, or therapeutic targets. We recently developed a novel, highly sensitive receptor-dependent bioassay that can detect nucleotides and lipid mediators in biological fluids obtained from human subjects and animal models, and will determine their profiles as novel biomarkers of allergic inflammation.