Perspectives in Inflammation Biology

Dr. Ena Ray Banerjee is Associate Professor of Zoology in University of Calcutta, India and an alumnus of the premiere educational institutions Lady Brabourne College and Gokhale Memorial Girls’ school. She was trained in Immunobiology during her PhD and worked extensively in immune modulation in inflammation in general and cytokine mediated inflammation in particular. Having taught both under- and post-graduate Zoology as lecturer under University of Calcutta, India, for several years, she pursued her post-doctoral studies as visiting scientist and subsequently faculty of University of Washington, School of Medicine, Seattle, USA. There she began with immunological studies defining key molecules in inflammation and eventually super-specialized into lung inflammation particularly allergy and made a natural transition onto regenerative medicine of the lung, having worked with one of the foremost scientists in stem cell biology, Professor Thalia Papayannopoulou and a renowned allergist Dr. William R. Henderson, Jr. Her work pioneered tissue engineering of lung lineage specific cells of the non-ciliated variety from human embryonic stem cells and identified stem cell niches in mouse lung. She returned to India and worked for a while in a drug discovery company Advinus Therapeutics, a TATA enterprise, where she led in vitro and in vivo efforts in pharmacological molecules, drug discovery in asthma and related respiratory illness, and then returned to academics as Reader in her alma mater, the renowned University of Calcutta.

 Chapter 1. Pulmonary and Systemic inflammation.- Chapter 2. Preclinical models of acute and chronic models of lung inflammation.- Chapter 3. Studying the roles of some key molecules in acute allergic asthma.- Research area 1- Enantiomers of albuterol, the OTC drug of choice for acute asthma management.- Research area 2. Studies on prophylactic and therapeutic strategies to combat some local and systemic inflammatory pathologies .- Sub-chapter I. Role of integrin α4 (VLA- Very Late Antigen 4) and integrin β2 (CD18) in a pulmonary inflammatory and a systemic disease model using genetic knockout mice.- Sub-chapter 2. Role of E-, L-, and P-selectins in the onset, maintenance and development of acute allergic asthma.- Sub-Chapter 3. Role of gp91phox subunit of NADPH oxidase and MMP-12 in a acute inflammatory and an acute degenerative pulmonary disease model using genetic knockout mice.- Chapter 4. Role of integrins α4 and β2 onset and development of chronic allergic asthma in mice.- Chapter 5 Role of integrin α4 (VLA- Very Late Antigen 4) in lymphopoiesis by short and long term transplantation studies in genetic knockout model of mice.- Chapter 6. Studying the roles of some critical molecules in systemic inflammation.