Deciphering How Diet and Aging Impact Neutrophil Biology and Their Role in Disease

Aging as well as nutrient excess and overnutrition have a tremendous detrimental impact in the immune response. The elderly and patients with metabolic disorders reveal a predisposition to chronic inflammation and infection due to hyperreactive neutrophil response and declined function, respectively. Neutrophils are critical regulators of immunity and the “first line responders” against external and internal stressors. These effector cells rely on distinct tiers of arsenals to counter threats including phagocytosis, protease secretion, and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Such mechanisms are not only protective but can also be destructive to tissues, therefore neutrophil production, trafficking, and clearance need to be tightly regulated. Using zebrafish as a model and taking advantage of its remarkable capacity to perform non-invasive intravital fluorescent microscopy our lab is deciphering how diet-induced metabolic syndrome and aging are impacting neutrophil production, function and behavior. We are also exploring how such impact affects outcome of injuries and infections, but also the development and progression of diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and malignancies.  

 

I am an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Developmental and Molecular Biology and Medicine (Hepatology) at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx (NY). After finishing my graduate work in Portugal and Spain at Carlota Saldanha's lab, under the supervision of Dr. Angelo Calado (IMM-Lisbon,PT) ) and Victoriano Mulero's Lab (Univ.Murcia-Murcia, Spain), I moved to the US and joined Anna Huttenlocher's lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for my postdoctoral training. I won two highly prestigious postdoctoral fellowships, the EMBO long-term fellowship in 2015 and the CRI/FCF postdoctoral fellowship in 2016, to study the role of the innate immune system on NAFLD-associated HCC and FLC progression, respectively. I have 16 years of experience working in inflammation, 13 years in neutrophil biology and 8 years in liver disease and cancer using the zebrafish model. As an independent researcher at Einstein, I set up a unique research program focused on studying the impact of diet and aging on neutrophils and their role in homeostasis and disease. 

In our lab we use a whole-animal approach that considers the complex and intricated cellular and molecular mechanism that are triggered by metainflammation and inflammaging, which is only possible using the small vertebrate animal model, the zebrafish. Our research is focused on four main research topics: 1) Understanding how neutrophil biology is altered by presence of metainflammation and inflammaging; 2) Investigating neutrophil prioritization mechanism in polytraumatic injury and how metainflammation alters such mechanism contributing to secondary complications and poor outcomes  (R35GM147416); 3) Deciphering mechanisms that regulate and promote pro-resolution function of neutrophils in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; 4) Unravelling the neutrophil dependent immune regulatory mechanisms involved in liver cancer biology and exploring neutrophil cytotoxic potential to eradicate liver cancers (e.g. Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Fibrolamellar Carcinoma).Our science has been supported by multiple grants and awards from NIGMS (NIH), Cancer Research Institute, B+ Foundation, Fibrolamellar Cancer Foundation, etc. 

I serve as a chair of the Montefiore-Einstein Cancer Center Women’s Initiative Network. I am also the Associate Director for Student Support for the Ph.D. Concentration in Clinical Investigation (PCI) program. In 2022, I was elected to serve as Zebrafish Disease Model Society (ZDMS) Executive Board, and I am an active member of the ZDMS DEI committee since 2021.