CFTRc seminar - Dr. Ajitha Thanabalasuriar

Dr. Ajitha Thanabalasuriar

Assistant Professor, CRC Tier 2 Infection, Immunity, and Targeted Drug Therapies, McGill University, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Talk title: ‘‘Alveolar Macrophages: moving to maintain lung homeostasis’’

During respiration, humans breathe in more than 10,000 liters of non-sterile air daily, allowing some pathogens access to alveoli. Interestingly, alveoli outnumber alveolar macrophages (AMs), which favors alveoli devoid of AMs. If AMs, like most tissue macrophages, are sessile, then this numerical advantage would be exploited by pathogens unless neutrophils from the blood stream intervened. However, this would translate to omnipresent persistent inflammation. Developing in vivo real-time intravital imaging of alveoli revealed AMs crawling in and between alveoli using the pores of Kohn. Importantly, these macrophages sensed, chemotaxed, and, with high efficiency, phagocytosed inhaled bacterial pathogens such as P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, cloaking the bacteria from neutrophils. Impairing AM chemotaxis toward bacteria induced superfluous neutrophil recruitment, leading to inappropriate inflammation and injury.

This seminar will be given online via Zoom. Details in attached poster.