Kurowska-Stolarska Lab

The Tissue Immunobiology Lab Members

Postdoctoral and Research Fellows
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Aziza Elmesmari 

Dr Aziza Elmesmari

Experimental Immunologist  

Dr Elmesmari investigates the function, origin, and niche signals leading to the development of different synovial tissue dendritic cell clusters from their blood precursors using synovial organoids and synovial biopsy-derived DC-T cell micro-cocultures.
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Lucy MacDonald 

Dr Lucy MacDonald

Experimental Immunologist and Bioinformatician

Dr MacDonald investigates the origin and niche signals that lead to the development of tissue-resident TREM2pos and LYVE1pos STMs, and examine their role in joint pathology through multi-omics, spatial transcriptomics, organoid systems, and mouse models.
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Domenico Somma 

Dr Domenico Somma

Molecular Immunologist and Data Scientist

Dr Somma investigates the role of synovial tissue DC in the transition from pre-RA to clinical RA.
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Theodoros Simakou

Dr Theodoros Simakou

Experimental Immunologist

Dr Simakou investigates the role of mechanosensory receptors in initiation of joint inflammation and disease flares.
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Lavinia Coletto

Dr Lavinia Coletto

Rheumatologist
Dr Colleto investigates the role of tissue resident and infiltrating myeloid cells in the transition from Psoriasis (PsO) to Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) in the multicentre study involving Glasgow, Rome and Zurich.

PsO-to-PsA

 

PhD Students
A head and shoulders shot of Jack Frew

Jack Frew

Project: To dissect the role of synovial tissue DC clusters in regulation of activation of citrullinated peptide specific effector and regulatory T-cells.
A head and shoulders shot of Luxin Yang

Luxin Yang

Project: To dissect the role of MerTK in TREM2pos STMs in the re-instating synovial tissue homeostasis in experimental arthritis.
A head and shoulders shot of Marcus Doohan

Marcus Doohan

Project: To dissect the role of mechanosensory receptor PIEZO1 in STMs in mediating pain and flares in RA patients in disease remission.
A head and shoulders shot of Dr Dario Bruno

Dr Dario Bruno

Project: To dissect the cellular and molecular heterogeneity of PsA synovium and skin underlying different disease trajectories in the multicentre study between Glasgow and Rome.
A head and shoulders shot of Olympia Hardy

Olympia Hardy
Project: To identify common and tissue unique macrophage and fibroblast Ligand-Receptor pairs governing homeostasis and tissue pathologies.
A head and shoulders shot of Alexandra Khmelevskaya

Alexandra Khmelevskaya

Project: To dissect the role of stromal cells in the transition from Psoriasis (PsO) to Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) in the multicentre study involving Zurich, Glasgow, and Rome.

PsO-to-PsA
A head and shoulders shot of Sneha Sharma

Sneha Sharma

Project: to develop explainable AI technologies for multimodal data to accelerate the process of delivering reliable treatment recommendation tools on remission-inducing therapy. This is multicentre study involving Newcastle, Rome, Glasgow, and Barcelona.

FLARE-RA