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My project was entitled "Molecular properties of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in Rheumatoid Arthritis”.
We eventually published this work in Frontiers in Immunology and I wrote a lay explanation of the paper on my blog.
Here is my 2 minutes laypersons description of this project, which I gave as a part of a "shot of science", at a "Pint of science" on 15th May 2017:
I study whether white cells explode in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a conditions where joints become inflamed and causes pain and immobility. My friend Sue, who’s 37, is a wife, mother of two energetic girls, keen runner and GP suffers from arthritis. Medication normally keeps her arthritis under control, but recently an episode of flu caused a major flare up, leaving a normally jolly competent individual, in significant pain and struggling to do her job well.The honest truth is that scientist and medics have an incomplete understanding of what triggers and causes’ arthritis like Sue’s. If we’re to better treat these conditions, we’ve got to understand them better.
I study one particular type of white blood cell – the neutrophil. We know that these cells normally protect the body from infection, you could consider them the front line infantry by shooting and by eating up bacteria and viruses that try to attack our bodies.
Recently scientists described these cells not only as eating up bacteria but by exploding, releasing a NET to trap and kill bacteria, maybe think of them as being like spiderman.
In conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, we know that these white blood cells rush to the joints where they breakdown the bone, leading to immobility and pain. I’m interested in this spiderman response, and release of NETS by white blood cell in rheumatoid arthritis and working out what is contained in the NETs, so that we can understand the biology of the disease better and hopefully provide better treatments for people like Sue.
Below is a video about the research in my lab
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