Kapellos Lab

Our laboratory investigates obstructive airway diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis and allergic asthma with the aim to understand how the immune system contributes to disease progression from early to late stages. Our goal is to identify cellular pathways that can be targeted to alleviate disease manifestations and improve the clinical outcome and patient quality of life. Complementary to this, we study how patient cohort diversity can be harnessed to promote personalized therapeutics for chronic lung disease.

In our research, we follow a dual approach; we employ cutting-edge single-cell transcriptomics technologies and computational analysis to reveal and define disease-relevant immune molecular phenotypes and we confirm our findings with ex vivo lung models, such as precision cut lung slices (PCLS), air-liquid interface (ALI) culture systems and in vitro immunological assays. We have access to bronchoalveolar fluid, sputum and peripheral blood clinical specimens from COPD, bronchiectasis and allergic asthma patients and we collaborate with experts in animal models of disease in our institute.

We currently focus on three major scientific avenues:

• The metabolic regulation of immune cells in COPD; we want to shed light on the role that the eicosanoid family of lipids plays in the progression from early to late disease severity stages and examine whether novel therapeutic concepts can be designed to target this pathway in tissue-resident and infiltrating lung myeloid cells.
• The role of sexual dimorphism in shaping immune responses in COPD; we want to discover the cause of the differences in clinical symptoms between men and women and identify the responsible immune-structural cell crosstalk for the design of targeted therapeutics.
• The deeper immunophenotyping of bronchiectasis endotypes; we test the hypothesis that the currently described clinical endotypes are the consequence of interactions between distinct lung immune populations and the microbiome and we aim to develop diagnostic biomarkers.

Do you want to join our team? PhD and postdoctoral candidates are encouraged to contact Dr. Kapellos to discuss their scientific interests and potential project ideas.