Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Our laboratory's current transformative research efforts focus on studying immune health in the context of surgery and anesthesia. Our interest stems from previous work elucidating the modulation of inflammatory responses by anesthetic and analgesic drugs.
The aim of studying immunity in patients undergoing surgery is to identify immune phenotypes predictive of aversive postoperative outcomes including protracted recovery and infection. Our major working hypotheses are that 1) specific immune phenotypes will predict the risk for developing postoperative complications, 2) immune phenotyping will lead to the discovery of mechanisms aggravating or alleviating such risk, and 3) gained knowledge will allow devising immune-modulatory strategies mitigating such risk. Mass cytometry (CyTOF), proteomics, and functional ex-vivo immune assays are the major molecular tools for the systems-based numerical and functional exploration of the circulating immune system.