Project: Cell Death Regulation and Role in Infection and Inflammatory Diseases

2022-01-01 – 2025-12-31

Abstract

Every day, billions of cells in the human body undergo cell death. This process ensures tissue homeostasis and elimination of harmful cells. Moreover, cell death is induced in response to microbial insults as a way to eliminate the infected cells and to alert the immune system through the release of danger signals. Accordingly,unwanted and excessive cell death exacerbate immune responses, and is therefore suspected to be at the origin of various human inflammatory pathologies. Cell demise can occur in different ways, providing eachform of cell death with a specific flavor. However, the mechanisms that regulate the induction and execution of these different cell death modalities, their respective and combined contribution to anti-microbial immunity or their precise detrimental consequences in inflammatory diseases remain unclear. This absence of fundamental knowledge limits the possibilities of therapeutic intervention. The proposed CD-INFLADIS research program aims at providing answers to these questions by setting up a strong quadruple interaction combining basic cell biology studies, medicinal chemistry, experimental mouse models of diseases and analysis of human clinical samples. As infectious and inflammatory diseases represent an increasing burden for the human health, we expect the major findings of our consortium to have important societal impact.