Ruth Franklin
Harvard University, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
The surfaces that line our airways and gut constantly meet the outside world, so they are often infected or damaged. Healing them requires both calming inflammation and rebuilding the cell layer, the epithelium, that forms the barrier.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
macrophages
tissue repair
regeneration
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Determine how macrophages, tissue-patrolling immune cells, regulate inflammatory responses after viral or chemical damage to mucosal tissues in ways that promote host survival.
- Define how macrophages communicate with epithelial cells to drive repair of damaged barrier tissue, using in vivo damage models.
- Use ex vivo organoid systems, small lab-grown tissues, to identify new regulators of macrophage-epithelial interactions during tissue repair and remodeling.
More about the research
Local stem cells are known to rebuild this layer, but how nearby immune cells help is less clear. This project focuses on macrophages, immune cells that patrol tissues, clear debris and help keep tissues stable. Their direct role in regrowing damaged epithelium is not well understood.
Why it matters
Damage from infection or injury to barrier tissues and the inflammation that follows feature in many complex diseases. Learning how macrophages promote repair could help develop treatments that dampen harmful inflammation, speed healing after infection and injury, and reduce the scarring-like tissue remodeling seen in many disease states.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kirsten Limesand
University of Arizona, AZ·Physiology
Define the metabolic state and function of T cells, including CD4+CD8+ double-positive T cells, in mouse parotid glands over time after fractionated radiation.
Adam Lietzan
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Identify the cellular pathways that interleukin-37 (IL-37), an anti-inflammatory cytokine, changes in oral epithelial cells challenged with microbes, using in vitro and in vivo models.
Jason Edward Shoemaker
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify lung immune responses that estradiol controls in male and female influenza-infected mice, using time-course immune and transcriptomic data and dynamic mathematical models of immune mechanisms.
The school
Harvard University: 42 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 712 research doctorates a year.
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