Hervé Agaisse, PhD, a professor in the department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, was recently awarded a five-year, 3.5 million R01 grant from the NIH to investigate the role of host factors in shigellosis.
The intestinal pathogen Shigella flexneri is the causative agent of bacillary dysentery (bloody diarrhea) and is responsible for more than 250 million cases of dysentery annually, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths. The disease results from epithelial cell invasion in the colon, leading to mucosal ulceration, vascular lesions and massive immune cell infiltration. This project seeks to understand the role of host factors, including epithelial and immune cells, in the development and resolution of the infection process. The outcomes of these studies could lead to new therapeutic approaches to the prevention or treatment of infectious diseases.