James Walsh
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Uveitis, inflammation inside the eye, is a leading cause of preventable blindness. In its autoimmune form, the body's own immune system attacks the eye.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
- Topics
uveitis
ocular immunology
choroid
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Test whether retinal antigens activate the adaptive immune system within the choroid, the immune-rich layer behind the retina, and whether this drives autoimmune uveitis in experimental models.
- Track how antigens from inside the eye are taken up in the choroid and how CD4+ helper T cells accumulate there during uveitis, using in vivo imaging.
- Define the mechanisms of immune surveillance in the choroid by analyzing large multiparameter immune datasets.
More about the research
Current treatments suppress the immune system throughout the whole body. They are often toxic and frequently do not work well. A key gap is knowing where in the eye the immune system first meets eye proteins and becomes primed to attack them.
Why it matters
Uveitis can cause blindness, and current whole-body immune treatments are often toxic and ineffective. Finding where and how the immune system is triggered against the eye could lead to diagnostic tests and more targeted therapies for patients with autoimmune uveitis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Scott McPherson
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology
Define how retinal microglia, especially the subset that acts as dendritic cells, present retinal self-antigens to T cells and drive autoimmune disease, using R161H mice with transgenic tracking and depletion of dendritic cells and microglia.
Steven Yeh
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare how often keratitis, conjunctivitis and uveitis occur in clade I versus clade II mpox infection, and identify risk factors for eye disease to guide public health interventions.
Edmund Tsui
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify which optical coherence tomography features, such as ellipsoid zone integrity, intraretinal hyperreflective foci and disorganization of retinal inner layers, predict response to therapy for uveitic macular edema across four completed randomized trials.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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