Andrew Williams
Tuft cells – overlooked players in the gut-brain axis?
Andrew Richard Williams, associate professor, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, has been awarded a Lundbeck Foundation LF Experiments research grant worth DKK 1,997,480.
This project explores the gut-brain signalling that may occur during chronic inflammatory disorders such as obesity, suggesting that it can be corrected by the presence of gut parasites that activate this circuit. In this way, neuroinflammation caused by gut dysbiosis can actually be alleviated by parasitic worm infection. In vitro methods, including culture of organoids and enteric neurons, will be used to investigate this interplay, as well as test the therapeutic potential of tuft cell activation in mouse models of obesity-induced neuroinflammation.
