On October 17th, Alessnadro defended his PhD thesis titled: CD4+ and CD8+ behaviour in the landscape of intestinal damage: Prepare for trouble and make it double. Alessandro’s work investigated how CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes behave during intestinal epithelial damage. Using co-cultures of human intestinal organoids and T cells, he examined chemotherapy's affect on intestinal cells and how this subsequently impacts T cell behaviour. Galectin-9 (Gal-9) was identified as a mediator that, when neutralized, reduces T cell proliferation and IFNγ production. Additionally he explored the effects of IFNγ-induced intestinal damage which was found to trigger the release of the chemokine CXCL11 promoting T cell migration. Finally Alessandro investigated T cell transcriptional repogramming in response to intestinal damage. These findings provide support for pre-clinical and prospective clinical investigations aimed at manipulating Gal-9 and CXCL11 to regulate T cell responses in the intestine.
You can learn more about Alessandro’s work if you click on the link here
