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Full NameProfessor Ursula Fearon
Molecular Rheumatology
Trinity College Dublin
Webpage:medicine.tcd.ie
Email Address:Email hidden; Javascript is required.
- infectious disease and the immune system
- Medicine
- Rheumatology
Our research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive disease pathogenesis in Rheumatic diseases. Using a multidisciplinary approach we aim to (a) identify predictors of progression and response to therapy, (b) elucidate cellular/molecular mechanisms of disease pathogenesis; and (c) develop new therapeutic strategies. We have established a number in-situ, in-vitro and ex-vivo models of arthritis using human tissue from patient with inflammatory arthritis, these models closely reflect the in-vivo joint environment thus allowing us to have a translational bench-to-bedside approach.
Our specific research themes include the following; (i) The role of hypoxia and cellular metabolism in regulating synovial inflammation; (ii) Molecular mechanisms of synovial angiogenesis, invasion and articular cartilage damage; (iii) To identify predictors of disease progression/response, and identify new therapeutic targets using high-throughput omic analysis along with a systems biology computational approach; (iv) Identification of novel immune cell subtypes in the inflamed joint using advanced molecular and cellular techniques and developing mechanisms by which we can induce an anti-inflammatory phenotype; (v) Pre-clinical proof of concept studies utilizing the ex-vivo whole tissue synovial explant model to establish pre-clinical drug development studies of novel biotherapeutics and small molecular weight candidates with industry partners.