Congratulations to Marsha Ritter Jones, MD, PhD, who was recently awarded a Department of Veterans’ Affairs VISN 4 (Competitive Career Development) grant to conduct the research project “Neuronal Regulation of the Cutaneous Innate Immune Response.”
Neural immune communication has been demonstrated to play a role in many diseases to include ones of autoimmune etiology and chronic pain. The goal of her project is to delineate the role of nonpeptidergic sensory neurons in interactions between the nervous and immune systems in the skin. Specifically, the investigators seek to understand the roles of (1) myeloid differentiation 1 (MD-1), a secreted protein known to activate toll-like receptors (TLRs) 2 and 4 that is expressed by these neurons and (2) neurturin (Nrtn), a neurotrophic growth factor that is a ligand of the GFRα2 receptor on nonpeptidergic neurons and a regulator of the mRNA expression of MD-1. It is hypothesized that these two proteins contribute to the innate immune response by nonpeptidergic neurons.