Esperanza Perucha, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Experimental Rheumatology
Email:
Centre for Inflammation Biology and Cancer Immunology (CIBCI),
King's College London
Office 1.32G - Centre for Inflammation Biology and Cancer Immunology
1st floor New Hunt House, King’s College London
SE1 1UL London, UK
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Research Interests:
Our lab is interested on mechanisms of immune activation and tolerance in man, from molecules to cells and the whole individual. We aim at finding new ways to modulate the human immune response, in order to restore homeostasis (which is defective in chronic inflammation) or boost the effector arm, which may benefit the body when fighting infection or cancer.
We have discovered that cellular cholesterol metabolism controls the switch between effector and regulatory phenotypes in human adaptive immune cells, and we are currently working on understanding at the molecular and cellular level how this works.
Some of the projects we work on are
- Understanding how cholesterol metabolism regulates the immune response.
- Cholesterol metabolism interventions to boost the immune response.
- Unmet needs in Rheumatoid Arthritis: discovering new biomarkers to monitor disease activity.
- Systemic immunometabolism: is there a link between obesity, depression, and inflammation?
- Immunometabolism in tolerance and inflammation: lessons from checkpoint inhibition.