Christos Tsatsanis, PhD

Member

Laboratory of Clinical Chemistry

Department of Laboratory Medicine

University of Crete Medical School

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Tel: +30-2810-394833

Lab web page: http://clinchem.med.uoc.gr/tsatsanis.html

Research

Inflammation and inflammatory diseases are complex diseases implicating various cell types. Modulation of the innate immune response is largely regulated by intracellular signaling molecules. The magnitude of Toll-like receptor signals is affected both by the expression levels of the receptors and by intracellular molecules that control TLR signaling, including Akt kinases (Vergadi et al, J Immunol.2014, Arranz et al., PNAS, 2012) and micro RNAs (Androulidaki et al., Immunity, 2009, Doxaki et al., J. Immunol., 2015). Such molecules are involved in transmitting multiple signals that contribute in cellular physiology and pathogenesis of diseases. Macrophages are central participants in the regulation of inflammatory responses under different conditions including infection and tissue damage and obtain distinct phenotypes characterized as M1 or M2. Sepsis is a condition where macrophages trigger a cascade of events that result in severe tissue injury and de-regulation of immune responses.

Focus of our laboratory is to delineate the molecular mechanisms involved in activation and inactivation of macrophages, their M1 and M2 type polarization and identify the molecular mechanisms involved in the crosstalk of the innate immune system with metabolic factors in the context of sepsis, inflammatory diseases and cancer. Changes in immune cell metabolism during inflammatory resposes and obesity as well as the role of miRNAs is investigated.

MiRNAs are also found in the serum and can be used as biomarkers for several diseases. Our lab is focusing on the identification of serum miRNAs as biomarkers of inflammation-related disorders including metabolic syndrome, male subfertility, renal disease and sepsis.