Iain Fraser, PhD

Chief, Signaling Systems Section

We study the pattern recognition receptor (PRR) signaling pathways that regulate macrophage-driven inflammation. We specialize in the development and application of high-throughput genetic screening technologies to identify key inflammatory regulators, and a combination of cell biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology to characterize their function. Our goal is to obtain a better understanding of how PRR signaling pathways control the macrophage inflammatory state, and ultimately to develop therapeutic strategies to regulate these responses in human inflammatory disease patients being treated by our collaborators in the NIH Clinical Center. Some recent focus areas include the identification of specific regulators of the kinetically separable events that follow NLRP3 inflammasome triggering. We have discovered protein complexes regulated by different kinase families that control the processes of inflammasome assembly, GSDMD mobilization and pyroptotic cell death. These studies and others provide the basis for numerous projects to investigate the molecular basis of innate immune-driven inflammation.