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
LEONID PADYUKOV GROUP
Genetics of rheumatic and other inflammatory diseases
About
Human complex diseases characterized by involvement of both environmental and genetic factors with important contribution from gene-gene and gene-environmental interactions. The pathways of many of diseases of this type are influenced through immunological mechanisms, e.g. inflammation. We like to understand how genetic variations influence development and/or protection from human common complex autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
To determine genetic components of the disease we perform analyses of genetic markers in several loci shown to be linked or associated with this disease, e.g. by genome wide association studies, dense mapping of the locus or re-sequencing. Rheumatoid arthritis, idiopathic myositis, SLE, IgA nephropathy, asthma, MCTD and multiple sclerosis are subjects of our investigations during last years. We pay special attention to the functionally important genetic markers, which may affect the structure of the molecule or may regulate important functions. We perform functional genetic studies using DNA methylation, mRNA, and protein expression analysis.
Interference of common genetic variations with splicing mechanisms is one of our focuses in functional genetics and such mechanisms is obvious background for gene-environment interaction.
Copy number variations, haplotype analysis and population genetics are also in the area of our expertise, which gives us an ability to extend the role of established genetic factors to different ethnical groups and populations. Integration of genetics, genomics, epigenetics and proteomics is in our agenda in study of disease susceptibility and pharmacogenomics of RA, specifically in relation to MTX and anti-TNF treatment.
Our research strategy is to combine a translational approach with basic science using analysis of clinical material from available biobank and exploring new bioinformatics tools.