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
Infections in patients with haematological disorders
Infections during pregnancy
Infections in patients with respiratory tract diseases
LARS ÖHRMALM TEAM
Infections in immunosuppressed patients
Infections in patients with haematological disorders
Early diagnosis of severe virus infections in immunosuppressed patients has undergone major advances during recent years. Modern molecular techniques have resulted in reduction of morbidity and mortality associated with these infections. Through experimental and clinical studies on human parvovirus B19 infections, we have shown that this common infection can also result in severe morbidity and lethal complications. The clinical course and corresponding immune responses are defined in various patient categories. Clinical protocols and therapeutic interventions have been launched as a result of these studies. The clinical and scientific focus of these studies has also been broadened to include other respiratory tract infections in children and adults. We have here contributed to the knowledge of how to diagnose and initiate early treatment in these cases and which pathogens can be defined as etiological agents of the symptoms. Definition of etiological causes for severe complications in patients can result in better antiviral treatment options and development of not only antiviral compounds but also combination treatments including modern immunomodulatory drugs.
Infections during pregnancy
Parvovirus B19 is a pathogen that can cause severe and lethal fetal infections if the mother is infected during pregnancy. Together with our colleagues in gynecology and pathology we have developed better diagnostic tools and treatment options for these cases. We have also co-founded a national reference center that allows consultancies in urgent and complicated cases of both bacterial and viral infections during pregnancy. The overall information is available for both the public and health professionals in a widely spread and frequently used database that is up-dated monthly with new clinical and scientific information (www.infpreg.se).
Infections in patients with respiratory tract diseases
Despite the use of established viral PCR methods, approximately 30% of all presumed viral respiratory tract infections are not detected with current methods. We have studied respiratory tract infections and how co-infections of virus and bacterial agents interact with the host immune response in the airway mucosa. For these studies our group has included healthy children with acute onset of severe respiratory tract infections, children suffering from asthmatic disorders and healthy control children. The project now aims to improve diagnostics to distinguish viral from bacterial pneumonia and optimize treatment in patients with severe infections. Mass spectrometry-based proteomic analyses are used as a promising method to assess host-microbe interaction in respiratory tract infections. Identifying mucosal biomarkers may provide a rapid, accurate and clinically useful test for early identification of patients with severe viral pneumonia. This is now explored in a number of ongoing clinical studies initiated by us as a result of our clinical activities.