BSI Manchester Immunology Group Seminar Series: Dr Molly Ingersoll, Institut Pasteur, Paris. Location: MS Lecture Theatre, Michael Smith Building
| Dates: | 30 January 2025 |
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| Times: | 12:00 - 13:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Biological Sciences |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Speaker: | Dr Molly Ingersoll |
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Title: Understanding the impact of sex on immunity in the bladder
Abstract: Our group is interested in understanding how biological sex influences mucosal immunity. To study this, we use mouse models of bladder diseases and human cohorts. Urinary tract infections are profoundly sex-biased, impacting nearly 50% of all women but only 5-10% of men. Additionally, while both sexes are at significant risk of reinfection, women are more likely to have recurrent infection, whereas men develop chronic UTI. Our recent work demonstrates that resident macrophages impair the adaptive response, and that IL-17 is a critical player in resolution of infection. We also identified events leading to the development of antigen-specific tissue-resident T cells in the bladder that are necessary and sufficient for protection against recurrent infection. We have identified innate and adaptive immune responses that are divergent between the sexes and are now determining how these responses can be immunomodulated for improved therapeutics that obviate the need for antibiotics to treat multidrug resistant uropathogens.
Bio: Dr. Molly Ingersoll received her PhD studying host-pathogen interactions from NYU School of Medicine working with Arturo Zychlinsky at NYU and at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. A brief postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis, MO with Scott Hultgren, studying innate immunity to urinary tract infection was followed by a postdoctoral appointment at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NYC, investigating monocyte and dendritic cell biology. Dr. Ingersoll is a Research Director with joint appointment between Institut Cochin and Institut Pasteur in Paris. Her team studies mucosal immunity in the bladder in the context of infection and cancer - to understand how this tissue responds to infectious and non-infection inflammatory diseases and to develop immunomodulatory approaches to improve disease outcomes.
Speaker
Dr Molly Ingersoll
Organisation: Institut Pasteur, Paris
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Michael Smith Lecture Theatre
Michael Smith Building
Manchester
