Briscoe Lab

Transplantation is widely recognized as the treatment of choice for end-stage organ disease in children. Nevertheless, despite significant advances in immunosuppressive therapeutics to prevent acute rejection, long-term graft survival remains suboptimal. For most transplanted organs, the rate of decline in function has not changed in over 20 years. It has therefore become most apparent that success following transplantation will require greater understanding of responses that both promote and inhibit chronic allograft rejection. There is also a huge need to develop mechanistic biomarkers to define the status of the alloimmune response, as well as indices of graft injury as a transformative care initiative to optimize therapy post transplantation.

Research in the Briscoe Laboratory relates to all these issues with a focus on the intragraft microenvironment, and how it functions to both promote and inhibit chronic rejection. Our studies focus on three broad areas including: 1) how events within the intragraft microenvironment including leukocyte-endothelial cell interactions promote, sustain, or inhibit T cell activation and allorecognition; 2) discrete signals and molecular interactions in select populations of T cells that are integral to inflammation resolution; and 3) the application of these discoveries into the development of biomarkers and new therapeutics to transform clinical care and improve outcomes following transplantation. We are expanding our research effort into the area of inflammation resolution, and we are specifically interested in endogenous mechanisms and regulatory signaling networks of pro-resolution. Understanding these processes will allow us to develop new paradigms for anti-rejection therapeutics following transplantation.