I am interested in both gut and skin inflammation, using models of colitis and atopic dermatitis to understand how host-pathogen interactions promote disease. Gut infection models help us to understand the immune response during chronic inflammation. Studying colonic inflammation in this way impacts conditions such as Crohn’s disease, as chronic nematode infection induces Crohn’s-like pathology in the colon (Levison et al.2010)). By manipulating worm infection models we can study disease induction, regulation and genetic susceptibility to gut inflammation (Levison et al. 2013) as well as the role of the enteric nervous system in the initiation and susceptibility to large intestinal inflammation (Assas et al. 2014, Assas et al. 2016).

• Program Director MSc Clinical Immunology
• Academic lead for the UK wide Clinical Immunology pathway, NHS Clinical Scientist Traineee Program.
• Lecturer MSc Clinical Immunology.
• Lecturer MBchB program.

Helen Williams (PostDoc); Arwa Al Kindi (PhD); Adefunke Ogunkanbi (PhD), Yasmine Alshammari (PhD).

Visiting Scientist:Mushref Bakri Assas (King Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia)

Collaborators:

Dr Peter Arkwright MD (Royal Manchester Children's Hospital)

Professor Hiro Matsuda, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo, Japan.