Assistant Professor of Medicine, HMS
Mast Cells are tissue resident pro-inflammatory leukocytes that dramatically expand in number across of a broad range of human type 2 allergic inflammatory diseases, where they are thought to play a critical role in disease progression. Despite this, relatively little is known about the tissue signals directing their expansion and maturation during disease or how their function may change across tissues or human diseases. My laboratory uses cutting-edge RNA sequencing approaches coupled with mouse modeling and ex-vivo co-culture systems to understand how tissue structural cells and local inflammatory signals combine to shape mast cell expansion, and how mast cells that mature under different conditions can in turn directly influence disease progression.