个人简介

Dr. Cynthia Sears is a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Her laboratory focuses on the pathogenesis of colon disease by enteric bacteria using enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF) as a model for inducing colon inflammation. Her lab identified the B. fragilis toxin gene (bft), purified the protein (BFT) and defined its mechanism of action in vitro. More recently, her team established in vivo models of ETBF colitis and colon tumorigenesis. Using these models, her team identified that ETBF induce selective Stat3/Th17 immune responses in the colon and that these pathways, at least in part, contribute to colon tumorigenesis. Her lab was the first to report this mechanism for inflammation-induced endogenous colon tumor induction in response to colon colonization with a human commensal (up to 40 percent of ETBF-colonized humans are asymptomatic). Her team is extending this work to human studies to understand the microbial contribution to colitis and colon cancer pathogenesis. Studies in her laboratory include the molecular mechanisms by which BFT and ETBF induce colon carcinogenesis, including identifying the BFT receptor, defining BFT-induced activation of colonic epithelial signaling pathways, determining the immunologic  determinants of colon carcinogenesis and establishing the genetic and epigenetic mutations contributing to colon tumor induction and promotion stimulated by ETBF through BFT.

研究领域

查看导师最新文章 （温馨提示：请注意重名现象，建议点开原文通过作者单位确认）

Infectious diarrheal diseases; cryptosporidiosis; food borne disease; bacteroides fragilis infections

Expert in foodborne and enteric infections and has studied the pathogenesis of enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF) both in the laboratory and in clinical settings over the past nearly 20 years.  Scientific work has been funded continuously by the NIH since 1993.  Presently focusing on mouse and human studies to define how ETBF and the colonic microbiota induce chronie colonic inflammation and colon cancer.