Immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) included conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or Sjögren’s syndrome (SJS). These diseases affect between 3-7% of the developed world, causing pain, fatigue and loss of tissue function. Current treatment relys on costly and life long suppression of the body’s own immune system, leading to an increased risk of infection and drug toxicity. In addition, these therapies become less effective with age and the reason for this is unknown.

A major effected cell type are fibroblasts whose role, across all tissues of the body, is to maintain structure/repair damage. However, in diseases such as RA/IBD/SJS, they actively contribute to inflammation. Despite this, no direct therapies targeting fibroblasts exist.

The Mahony lab combines spatial transcriptomics (e.g. Xenium, CosMx) with multiomic single cell transcriptomics (e.g. scRNAseq, scATACseq), multiplex imaging and functional validation to identify novel therapeutics targeting fibroblasts. tThe overall goal is to modulate fibroblast behavior to specifically target tissues chnages in RA/IBD/SJS without the need for broad immunosuppression.