Work in the Sansom lab focuses on identifying the cellular and molecular causes of immune mediated inflammatory disease (IMID) using systems-level approaches.
Loss of tissue homeostasis in diseases such as spondyloarthritis (SpA) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) involves dysregulated signalling between heterogenous populations of immune and stromal cells. We are using single cell and functional genomics-based approaches to decipher this complexity and advance understanding of the cellular circuits, biological pathways and genes that cause and sustain disease. A second area of the groups interests lies in the field of immune system development. The use of data science approaches to model, contextualise and interpret complex datasets is central to our research.
Currently we are pursuing projects in the following areas:
- Investigating the cellular causes of HLA-B27 associated spondyloarthritis
- Investigating fibroblast heterogeneity in rheumatoid arthritis
- Mapping the cell types present in healthy human joints
- Investigating the role of mononuclear phagocytes in inflammatory bowel disease
- The role of thymic epithelial cells in central tolerance
Our team
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Moustafa Attar
Research Associate in Single Cell Genomics
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Maria Gomez Vazquez
DPhil Student
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Liying Jin
DPhil student
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Cesar Medina Prada
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computational Biology
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Stephen Sansom
Associate Professor
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
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Stephen Sansom
Associate Professor
Selected publications
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IRF5 guides monocytes toward an inflammatory CD11c+ macrophage phenotype and promotes intestinal inflammation.
Journal article
Corbin AL. et al, (2020), Sci immunol, 5
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Deconvolution of monocyte responses in inflammatory bowel disease reveals an IL-1 cytokine network that regulates IL-23 in genetic and acquired IL-10 resistance.
Journal article
Aschenbrenner D. et al, (2020), Gut
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Distinct fibroblast subsets drive inflammation and damage in arthritis.
Journal article
Croft AP. et al, (2019), Nature, 570, 246 - 251
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GM-CSF drives dysregulated hematopoietic stem cell activity and pathogenic extramedullary myelopoiesis in experimental spondyloarthritis.
Journal article
Regan-Komito D. et al, (2020), Nat commun, 11
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A Highly Efficient Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Microglia Model Displays a Neuronal-Co-culture-Specific Expression Profile and Inflammatory Response.
Journal article
Haenseler W. et al, (2017), Stem cell reports, 8, 1727 - 1742
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Population and single-cell genomics reveal the Aire dependency, relief from Polycomb silencing, and distribution of self-antigen expression in thymic epithelia.
Journal article
Sansom SN. et al, (2014), Genome res, 24, 1918 - 1931