Biography
Professor Robert A. Harris
Professor Robert A. Harris (Bob) was born in Harpenden in Southern UK in 1966. He conducted a Bsc.Hons undergraduate degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic, majoring in Parasitology in 1987. PhD studies at University College London studying innate immune agglutinins in Schistosoma host snail species with Terry Preston and Vaughan Southgate as supervisors culminated with a thesis defence in early 1991. A 2.5 year postdoc at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Paul Kaye’s research group ensued, with focus on understanding the intracellular fate of Leishmania spp. protozoans in macrophages. Bob was awarded a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowship that permitted his relocation to the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) in the spring of 1994. A postdoc period was spent split between the labs of Anders Örn and Tomas Olsson, in which he studied Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma bruceii protozoan proteins. Bob became an Associate Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in 1999, heralding his establishment as a PI. Bob started to work with autoimmune diseases in 1996 and began study of therapy using live parasite infections or parasite molecules. His research group has developed autoantigen-specific vaccines, defined the effects of post-translational biochemical molecules on autoantigenicity and developed a macrophage adoptive transfer therapy that prevents pathogenesis in several experimental disease models. He became Professor of Immunotherapy in Neurological Diseases in 2013. In recent years research focus has centred on understanding the immunopathogenesis of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, with particular emphasis on development of immunotherapies directed at microglial cells as potential therapeutic paradigms.
Bob Harris CV July 2020
ERIK HERLENIUS GROUP
Development of autonomic control
About
Immature or deficient autonomic control is a common problem in infants born at a premature age and is of central importance in apneas, secondary hypoxic brain damage and sudden infant death syndrome.
PER ERIKSSON GROUP
Research
For better understanding of disturbances in respiratory control we study early development of cardiorespiratory control, brainstem neural networks and its associations with normal and pathological breathing. The conceptual change introduced by our recent data that endogenous prostaglandins are central pathogenic factors in respiratory disorders and the hypoxic response, open new diagnostic and therapeutic avenues that should significantly better the diagnostics and treatment of newborns and adult patients.
Inflammation is a major culprit in breathing disorders and we hypothesize that by using a newly developed urinary prostaglandin biomarker we can screen, detect and protect against inflammation related breathing disorders.
Our collaborative efforts enable us to move from a clinical problem to molecular understanding of the disease and studies are performed in patients, animal & in vitro models.
Our research is focused on the development of autonomic control with normal and paediatric patients as the target. Autonomic dysfunction in breathing and circulatory control often has its origin in neurodevelopment disorders. Furthermore, our basic research in developmental neuroscience how neural activity and stem cells form activity dependent networks is vital for the development of therapeutic interventions.
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Contact: communication@cmm.se
CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE
AFSAR RABHAR TEAM
Studies of the importance of Cytomegalovirus infection in breast cancer
About
Recently, Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection has been found in breast cancer. Our research group has recently detected HCMV in most neoplastic cells in sentinel lymph nodes and brain metastases (BMs) of breast cancer. The exact mechanism by which BMs develop is unknown. Several risk factors are associated with BMs. These include human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positive breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and COX-2 expression, as well as enhanced expression of integrin αvβ3, CXCR4/SDF-1 and CD44. COX-2 expression is thought to mediate impaired blood-brain barrier functions, while CXCR4/SDF-1, CD44, and integrin αvβ3 are thought to mediate increased metastatic potential to the brain and promote angiogenesis, which may contribute to the development of BM.
HCMV infection induces CD40 expression on the surface of the infected cells that interact with CD40L and results in VEGF production. Moreover, increased expression of integrin αvβ3, CXCR4/SDF-1, and CD44 may promote angiogenesis and initiate metastasis formation. High expression of HCMV-US27, another putative chemokine receptor, has been associated with enhanced expression of CXCR4 and induces cellular migration. In addition, HCMV infection increase expression of CD44, which increases cell–cell interactions, cell adhesion, and migration of infected cells. The prevalence of HCMV proteins and nucleic acids is very high in primary and metastatic tumors and may drive the development of metastasis; therefore, this virus may represent a potential therapeutic target in metastatic cancer. The long term goal of my study is to further understand the oncomodulatory role of HCMV in breast cancer and metastasis formation.