Governance of anti-fungal immunity by the pulmonary tissue environment

Our lungs are exposed to thousands of fungal spores everyday (particularly Aspergillus), triggering immune cells in the lung to cause asthma and severe allergic disease. Despite the rising number of cases and developing resistance to current therapies, we do not understand how or why Aspergillus causes asthma. Furthermore, I have discovered that the lung airways govern immune cell responses via modifying their metabolic state. Yet the airway factors that modify immune cell metabolism to cause asthma are unknown. I aim to understand how specialised immune cells, called dendritic cells and macrophages, cause asthma when responding to Aspergillus. I will pinpoint the specific cell subsets, establish how the airway environment governs their ability, and define the precise fungal motifs these cells recognise to mediate allergic inflammation. Overall, my project will discover how fungal asthma develops, as well as reveal new treatment strategies to prevent and/or treat these conditions in the future.