Andrew D. Luster
Massachusetts General Hospital
CIID/ Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology
149, 13th Street, Room 8301
Charlestown, MA 02129
Tel: 617-726-5710
Fax: 617-726-5651
email: aluster@mgh.harvard.edu
14 Postdoctoral Fellows
Chemokines and Lipid Chemoattractants in Normal Physiology and Disease
Research in my laboratory focuses on understanding the role of chemokines and lipid chemoattractants and their receptors in controlling the trafficking of leukocytes in vivo. Gene-targeted and transgenic mouse strains have been developed to study the role of chemokines and chemoattractant receptors in the development and delivery of organ-specific innate and adaptive immune and inflammatory responses in mouse models of inflammatory, autoimmune, allergic and infectious diseases. System biology approaches are being utilized to understand how multiple chemoattractant pathways are integrated in vivo for the fine control of leukocyte trafficking. We also study the regulation of chemokine production in vivo since this is a critical determinant of their role in a given biological response. We have a particular interest in the role of innate immune receptors, such as toll-like receptors, in regulating chemokine production in vivo. We are also interested in structure-function relationships of chemokines and their receptors as well as the molecular mechanism of chemokine signal transduction, as these are important questions relevant to chemotaxis and immune cell trafficking in health and disease. Chemokines and chemoattractant receptors are also interrogated in human diseases to determine chemokine systems relevant for disease pathogenesis. Finally, we have developed a mouse with a human immune system to study mechanistic aspects of the human immune response in vivo, and to study the interaction of strictly human tropic pathogens (e.g., HIV) with the human immune system.
References:
Colvin RA, Means TK, Diefenbach TJ, Moita LF, Friday RP, Sever S, Campanella GSV, Abrazinski T, Manice LA, Moita C, Andrews NW, Wu D, Hacohen N, Luster AD. Synaptotagmin-mediated vesicle fusion regulates cell migration. Nat Immunol. 2010; 11: 495-502.
Chou RC, Kim N, Sadik CD, Seung E, Lan Y, Byrne MH, Haribabu B, Iwakura Y, Luster AD. Lipid-cytokine-chemokine cascade drives neutrophil recruitment in a murine model of inflammatory arthritis. Immunity 2010; in press.
Medoff BD, Seung E, Hong S, Thomas SY, Sandall BP, Duffield JS, Kuperman DA, Erle DJ, Luster AD. CD11b+ myeloid cells are the key mediators of Th2 cell homing into the airway in allergic inflammation. J. Immunol. 2009; 182: 623-635.
Brainard DM, Seung E, Frahm N, Cariappa A, Bailey CC, Hart WK, Shin H-S, Brooks SF, Knight HL, Eichbaum Q, Yang Y-G, Sykes M, Walker BD, Freeman GJ, Pillai S, Westmoreland SV, Brander C, Luster AD*, Tager AM*. Induction of robust cellular and humoral virus-specific adaptive immune responses in HIV-infected humanized BLT mice. J. Virology 2009; 83:7305-7321. *These authors contributed equally.
Campanella GS, Tager AM, El Khoury JK, Thomas SY, Abrazinski TA, Manice LA, Colvin RA, Luster AD. Chemokine receptor CXCR3 and its ligands CXCL9 and CXCL10 are required for experimental cerebral malaria. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2008; 105: 4814-4819.
Immunology webpage updated 7/22/2010