Topic Overview:

More and more, researchers are realizing that immunology and immune signaling are central mediators of most complex diseases not only from traditional fields like rheumatology, infectious disease, and cancer but also from fields like cardiology, aging, and pain. However, in many ways, researchers still have a very underdeveloped understanding of how immune cells are mediating disease. A central focus of Dr. Tilstra’s and others’ research is understanding how immune cells act not just in the periphery but in targets they invade. The initial focus of Tilstra’s and colleagues’ work was to define how immune cells change when they invade the kidney in lupus nephritis. Contrary to their initial hypothesis, Tilstra and colleagues discovered that, in lupus, these infiltrating cells were suppressed rather than activated, similar to what is seen in infiltrating cells in cancer. Current studies by Tilstra’s group are investigating the mechanism by which these immune cells change and how they might be manipulated to treat or suppress autoimmune disease but also how these cells affect cancer therapy, specifically in the context of checkpoint blockade.