The Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics Seminar Series is pleased to have Dr. Melissa Lodoen on Wednesday February 8th 2023 at 11:00am speak on “Innate immunity in the vasculature and the CNS during Toxoplasma gondii infection” Please join us in person to hear from Dr. Lodoen in the Academic Research Building (ARB) R5-265.
Dr. Melissa Lodoen is the Vice Chair of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the School of Biological Sciences at UC Irvine. The research in her laboratory focuses on the cellular and molecular interactions between the pathogen Toxoplasma gondii and the host immune system. T. gondii is an intracellular parasite that infects ~35% of the human population worldwide. In healthy individuals, a robust immune response controls the acute infection, but the parasites establish a chronic infection, which can reactivate and cause severe disease. The goal of her research is to define mechanisms by which T. gondii modulates host immune cell function during infection, in an effort to better understand the molecular basis for the development of disease.