Professor Yousr Gorgi Lakhoua

Country: Tunisia

Institution: Charles Nicolle Hospital

Research Areas: Autoimmunity and kidney transplantation

LR03SP01 investigates immunogenetic mechanisms of acute allograft rejection and kidney chronic dysfunction in order to design early non invasive biomarkers in such kidney transplantation complication’s diagnosis and prognostic. Our studies focus on epithelial mesenchymateuse transition proved that mRNA quantification of vimentin predicts the onset of renal allograft dysfunction. Furthermore, IL-17/IL-23 pathway exploration showed new knowledge that we intend to use as novel therapeutic targets. These results were published in international journals (Transplant proceeding, JLB…).

The second research area of the lab is the functional exploration and genetic polymorphisms studies of immunoregulatory molecules (PTPN22, CTLA-4, TLR, fcγR, BAFF….) that could constitute a susceptibility factor to autoimmune diseases such as Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Subsequently, our studies in IBD Tunisian patients revealed that quantification of mRNA expression of IL-17, IL-23 and IL-23R in colon biopsies was correlated to active Chron’s disease (CD) and could be considered as predictive factor of biotherapy response. To verify these results, a multicentre study involving adults with different clinical forms of CD was designed.