Lisa Spencer
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
People with one allergic disease often go on to develop others. A child with a food allergy, for example, is more likely to develop asthma.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
- Topics
eosinophils
allergic march
food allergy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2031
What they work on
- Determine how gut-resident eosinophils hold back the spread of type 2 immunity, using mouse lines that lack key receptors and signaling molecules only in eosinophils, in models with and without an allergen.
- Trace the origin, features and tissue retention of lung-invading eosinophils that appear after food allergen exposure, using pulse-chase and lineage tracing in mice.
- Compare cell and molecular markers in duodenal biopsies and blood from patients with and without food allergies to see whether the eosinophil circuits found in mice also occur in humans.
More about the research
This pattern, called the "allergic march", moves along the skin, the gut, and the lungs. More than 50 million people in the US have some form of allergic disease. Yet it is not clear how an allergy in one organ makes another, distant organ more vulnerable. This project asks how immune signals travel from the gut to the lungs.
Why it matters
Many people with food allergies later develop asthma. Learning how a gut allergy makes the lungs more vulnerable could point to new treatments that interrupt this allergic march. The work also bears on drugs that block IL-5, a signaling molecule that eosinophils need to survive. These drugs remove eosinophils throughout the body. If gut eosinophils actually help hold back allergy, long-term use of these drugs could carry hidden risks for allergic patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Amali Samarasinghe
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how eosinophils, allergy-associated white blood cells, take up and kill Streptococcus pneumoniae inside and outside the cell, and how taking up the bacteria changes the eosinophils' physiology and features.
David Artis
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine which microbiota-derived metabolites induced by a high-fiber diet activate ILC2s (innate immune cells that trigger type 2 responses) and drive eosinophilia and type 2 inflammation that speeds worm expulsion in a mouse helminth model.
Emma Guttman
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify skin gene, protein and microbiome biomarkers that raise the risk of atopic dermatitis or support a healthy skin barrier, comparing high-risk Rochester infants with low-risk Old Order Mennonite infants.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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