Inmunorregulation and Inflammation

The deregulation of the immune system can lead to chronic conditions that are known as immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). IMIDs include more than 80 clinical entities such as autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases that affect up to 10% of the population in the western world. Basic research has allowed to characterize physiological mechanisms responsible for controlling the development of inflammatory and adaptive responses mediating pathological effects, and this knowledge is critical to innovate at the level of strategies directed at the immune system and to understand the mechanism of action of drugs currently being used in the clinic.

Our group is interested in the study of cellular and molecular mechanisms that control the inflammatory process and the adaptive immune response. We focus on the biology of dendritic cells (DCs), since they constitute a sub-population of leukocytes able to orchestrate effector adaptive immune responses, while having powerful strategies capable of regulating the development of the inflammatory process and the adaptive response. Our work tries to cover relevant and original aspects at the level of molecular mechanisms while looking for pertinence in human health.

In this framework, the laboratory has characterized the emerging ion transporters TORID-1 (Tmem176b) and TORID-2 (Tmem176a), which are critical regulators of NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Inflammasome regulation by TORID-1 has been shown to be relevant in the anti-tumor immune response. We have characterized pharmacological inhibitors of TORID-1 and TORID-2 that have been characterized at a pre-clinical level as promising anti-tumor drugs.