Research Projects

Pragmatic disease modelling is crucial for understanding the complex microbe-host crosstalk during pathogenesis and extrapolating information in diagnosis and treatment of microbe-assisted infections. In microbial infections, host-pathogen interactions have been extensively studied using various models in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo. The immune system, including macrophages, dendritic cells, and keratinocytes, has been used to mimic in vivo conditions to demonstrate their mechanistic pathways with microbes. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are undifferentiated adult multipotent stem cells that maintain the stem cell niche and organ homeostasis in our bodies. Recent investigations have shown a novel feature of MSCs, which can function as novel phagocytic immune cells and exhibit intrinsic autophagy and death of microbes like Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Mtb bacteria. However, such reports are scarce and restricted to understanding mycobacterial replication and few stray reports on Aspergillus conidia. The proposal proposes the development of an in vitro model to explore the phagocyte-like functions of MSCs during microbial infections, serving as an innovative basis for immunotherapy. This collaborative project aims to explore the novel functionality of MSCs and study mechanistic pathways of the host-microbe crosstalk.