Jane Eddleston
Title: Senior Research Associate
Duties: To direct research projects under the guidance
of Associate Professor Bruce Zuraw, Division of Rheumatology
in the Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine (MEM).
"I have a great boss and I'm in a great division. Everyone
is friendly, helpful, and supportive. I decide the direction
of my work, but I get help and advice whenever I need it.
I've learned a lot and grown a lot."
Started at TSRI: 1999.
Background: B.Sc. with honors from the University
of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England; Ph.D in genetics, Imperial
College, London; postdoctoral fellowship at the National Heart
and Lung Institute, London.
Research Focus: Understanding the mechanisms of allergic
airway inflammation in asthma. In particular, her experiments
have focused on the regulation of chemokine receptors in the
epithelial cells lining the human airway in response to inflammatory
mediators.
"Asthma is on the rise, especially in children," Eddleston
notes. "It's important to ask how we can break the cycle."
While at TSRI, Eddleston found the expression of several
chemokine receptors, CXCR1, CXCR2 and CXCR4, is significantly
increased in the airway epithelial cells of people with active
airway inflammation.
She followed this work by investigating whether kinins,
inflammatory mediators known to be elevated during airway
inflammation, could regulate chemokine receptor expression.
She found that kinins up-regulate the expression of these
chemokine receptors in the nasal epithelial cells of patients
with mild allergic rhinitis, but not in normal controls.
"Next, I'd like to look at the down-stream effects of activating
CXC chemokine receptors, to discover how they contribute to
airway inflammation, " Eddleston says.
Use of TSRI Research Facilities: General Clinical
Research Center (GCRC), a seven-bed inpatient unit where the
clinical utility of discoveries made in the lab can be tested;
MEM core facility; laser capture dissection microscope facility.
"This research wouldn't have been possible without the GCRC.
There is no GCRC in London! I told my friends back home about
it and they couldn't believe [how lucky I was]. The GCRC nurses
are great-they get samples from patients, follow research
protocols, isolate cells—and they are interested in the
outcome!
"As a scientist, it is invaluable to have the use of core
facilities—not only the GCRC, but also the real-time
PCR machine and flow cytometry machine in the MEM core facility
as well as the laser capture dissection microscope facility.
It would be impossible to buy some of this instrumentation
on a single grant and the staff is there to answer questions.
I appreciate the other kinds of support at TSRI, too—like
the e-mail "wetlab" classified ads and the seminars on grant
writing."
Extracurriculars: Hiking, going to the movies, spending
time with her fiancé, Mark. She also recently discovered
mountain biking.
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