Professor Kamel Djenouhat

Country: Algeria

Institution: Department of Medical Biology, Rouiba Hospital, Algiers, Algeria

Research Areas: Cellular Immunology, Inborn Errors of Immunity, Complement Deficiencies, Autoimmune Diseases

Lab Website: N/A

The Department of Medical Biology of Rouiba Hospital comprises different units of medical biology including: biochemistry, hematology, microbiology and parasitology. It also contains the Complement & Cellular Immunology Laboratory (CCIL), which focuses on complement exploration (C1q – C9, CH50…), cellular immunology (CBC, immunophenotyping, and functional assays by flow cytometry…), and autoimmune diseses (autoantibody testing). Besides routine activities, our lab works to understand the link between immunodeficiency, infection susceptibility, and autoimmune diseases. Patients with primary immunodeficiency diseases most often are recognized because of their increased susceptibility to infection, but in some cases autoimmunity/inflammation are the first or the predominant clinical symptoms of the underlying immunodeficiency. We first focused on complement deficiencies such as C1 inhibitor and complement factor H (CHF) deficiencies, which are excellent models for studying the link between immune (complement) dysregulation and autoimmunity (e.g., C1 inhibitor/lupus or celiac disease) or innate autoreactivity (e.g., complement factor H/ atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome). Over the last two years we extended our investigation to other groups of inborn errors of immunity such as antibody, cellular and phagocytes deficiencies.