RESEARCH PROJECTS
Our research program focuses on “Lung autoimmunity and airway biomarkers." Current ongoing projects span from investigating mechanisms of disease to validating biomarkers in asthma, eGPA, COVID-19 and lung cancer.
Eosinophils
The Mukherjee Lab are self-proclaimed “eosinophiles”. We study the different effector functions of eosinophils that drive eosinophilic airway diseases (asthma, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, etc), and investigate the lesser known pathomechanisms of eosinophilia – such as eosinophilia-triggered autoimmunity and eosinophil extracellular traps.
Lung Autoimmunity - Complex Airway Diseases
The lab focuses on molecular and cellular mechanisms that may lead to autoimmune responses in the lungs in complex airways disease and systemic autoimmune diseases. We develop molecular tools to detect specific autoantibodies in sputum (and other airway secretions) and test their pathogenicity associated with disease mechanisms, and response to treatments, in particular biologics.
Autoimmunity in COVID-19
The project investigates the persistence of symptoms in individuals after 12 weeks of recovering from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Possibility of autoimmune responses developing as a result of hyper immune response of the host towards SARS-CoV2 is getting increasingly accepted. The three key goals include studying self-antigen reactivity and its relation to long-COVID symptoms over 24 months, examining persistent inflammation and cytokine levels in long-COVID patients, and analyzing how demographics, vaccination, variants, reinfections and other factors impact symptoms.
Biomarkers in Lung Diseases
The Mukherjee Lab takes an acute interest in validating protocols and state-of-the-art technologies for measuring inflammatory mediators and analytes in airway secretions. Our lab hosts the latest multiplex-ELISA automated reader from Protein Simple (R&D Systems), called EllaTM (glass nanotube reactors embedded in a micro-fluidics cartridge) that can detect analytes using minimum volume, minimum time and significantly reduced human interface. Additionally, in collaboration with Thoracic Surgery, our lab is also interested to detect cell-free tumour DNA in the airway secretions of lung cancer patients as a surveillance tool for early detection of recurrence after curative (resection) surgery.
