Fränze Progatzky

I am a Principal Investigator in Tissue Biology and a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow.

My overall interest is to understand how different cell types cooperate to achieve healthy tissue function and coordinate the response to injury and inflammation during disease. I am particularly intrigued how these tissue-regulatory processes are orchestrated at mucosal barriers, such as the gut and the lung, which are constantly exposed to the external environment, placing special demands on resident cell populations to mediate immunity as well as tolerance. The capacity for flexible and rapidly adaptable responses of intestinal and pulmonary tissues to inflammatory stimuli relies on the integrated activity of multiple cell types. Whereas the contributions of immune, epithelial and stromal cells in barrier tissue integrity, maintenance and repair are well understood, the role of intrinsic neuroglia networks remains largely unknown. The work in our lab departs from our recent findings that enteric glial cells carry out important roles in orchestrating intestinal immunity and aims to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the wider tissue-regulatory functions of peripheral glial cells in health and disease.

I obtained a PhD in immunology from Imperial College London with Prof. Maggie Dallman studying mechanisms of acute and chronic mucosal inflammatory responses. As a postdoctoral fellow, at the Francis Crick Institute with Vassilis Pachnis, I uncovered novel immunoregulatory functions for enteric glial cells during gut homeostasis and in response to intestinal infections. I joined the Kennedy Institute in October 2023. The work in our lab will synergise and integrate expertise and knowledge in mucosal immunology and neuroglial biology to uncover fundamental roles of peripheral glia in barrier tissue immunity.