Award: Arthritis and Related Autoimmune Disease Research Grant
Biography: I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. I am a highly motivated translational rheumatology researcher with a research focus on myeloid functions in Rheumatoid Arthritis and a keen interest in immunometabolism and early biomarkers of disease.
I graduated with a BSc in Biomedical, Health and Life Sciences at University College Dublin with a 1st class honors. I then completed my PhD research at Trinity College Dublin as an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar in the Molecular Rheumatology research group under the supervision of Prof Ursula Fearon and Prof Douglas Veale examining phenotypic characterizations of circulating and synovial tissue myeloid cells in RA. In 2022 I joined the Gravallese lab at Harvard Medical School initially as a visiting research fellow and subsequently a postdoctoral fellow. I am also a passionate science communicator. I am the founder and host of the weekly scicomm podcast ‘Unravelling Science’, previous Co-Director of the Pint of Science Ireland festival and member of the SciComm Collective a group of science communicators brought together to advise the Irish Government on communicating COVID-19 information.
This ANRF grant examining the role of SPP1+ macrophages in RA combines my existing expertise in translational rheumatology and immunometabolism with my mentor Dr Gravallese’s expertise in osteoimmunology. I am very excited to further elucidate complex interactions between metabolism, bone and the immune system in RA.
Research Summary: Inflammation is a critical process in fighting infection. However, if uncontrolled, it can contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA is a chronic disease in which the joint lining becomes inflamed, causing pain, stiffness, and bone loss. One of the major immune cells involved in RA is called macrophages. Different types of macrophages have different functions. We discovered a unique type of macrophage that is in the joint of RA patients but not healthy people. Recent research has focused on people ‘at-risk’ of arthritis. These are people who have a family history of RA and/or specific risk factors for the disease, but who do not yet have the disease. We have shown that these unique macrophages are present in joints of people at risk of developing RA, so we want to investigate them further. Firstly, we plan to examine where exactly these unique macrophages live in the joint and whether they are close to bone and other inflammatory cells using a cutting-edge technique called spatial transcriptomics. Finally, we know that the energy requirements of cells can influence their function. We will examine how these unique macrophages use energy to maintain their activated state. We will then target the energy requirements of these cells to reduce inflammation and bone loss. Our proposal will improve the health of people with RA by examining a new cell target to predict disease onset and prevent early bone loss, ultimately improving the quality of life of RA patients
