Basak Ural
Columbia University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Older adults are more vulnerable to lung infections, and lung function starts to decline after about age 30. Over a lifetime, the lungs also take in polluted air.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
macrophages
lung immunity
aging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Evaluate the functions of the human lung macrophage subset that takes up environmental particles, across donor ages, using lymph nodes and lung tissue from healthy organ donors and high-dimensional transcriptomics.
- Measure the engulfing (phagocytosis) and migration capacity of aging lung macrophages with two-photon and CODEX imaging, comparing lung-draining lymph nodes with particle-free mesenteric lymph nodes.
- Test how macrophages carrying atmospheric particulate matter respond to recently encountered pathogens at different ages, to see whether particles weaken respiratory immune responses.
More about the research
Macrophages, immune cells that engulf particles and microbes and guard tissues, are among the first cells to respond to these exposures. How a lifetime of pollution changes these cells in the human lung is poorly understood, mainly because healthy human lung tissue is hard to obtain.
Why it matters
Elderly people are more susceptible to respiratory infections, and poorly working lung macrophages can worsen diseases such as influenza through excess inflammation. Showing how air-pollution particles change these cells with age could help explain why older adults fare worse, and could guide immune therapies against newly encountered respiratory pathogens.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nu Zhang
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how TRM-stem cells, Tcf-1+ stem-like CD8+ T cells that become resident in tumor-draining lymph nodes, are related to other T cell subsets there, by tracking tumor-specific T cells in mouse tumor models.
Katsuo Kurabayashi
New York University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Build a microfluidic human Lymph node-on-a-Chip that recreates the node's key compartments (paracortex, follicle, subcapsular sinus, lymphatic and blood vessels) with continuous flow of lymph-like fluid.
Amariliz Rivera
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Microbiology & Immunology
Compare how tissue-derived and monocyte-derived alveolar macrophages, two lung immune-cell groups with different origins, reduce pathogen burden and protect lung tissue during helminth, fungal and viral infections, using discovery-based and targeted in vitro and in vivo studies.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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