New center focuses on inflammation and disease

UF Health establishes the Center for Inflammation and Mucosal Immunology.

By: Lindy Brounley
Mansour Mohamadzadeh, PhD, director of the new Center for Inflammation and Mucosal Immunology and a professor in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine

Mansour Mohamadzadeh, PhD, director of the new Center for Inflammation and Mucosal Immunology and a professor in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. Photo by Maria Belen Farias

Recognizing growing evidence that inflammation influences many diseases — including diabetes, certain cancers and even Alzheimer’s — UF Health has established the Center for Inflammation and Mucosal Immunology to foster collaboration among members of the UF biomedical research community with shared interest in inflammation and disease.

“Though the center is very new, our members already number more than 40 UF scientists whose interdisciplinary research efforts explore the whole gamut of complex biological responses of inflammation and immunology,” said center director Mansour Mohamadzadeh, PhD, a professor in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine department of infectious diseases and pathology, and a faculty member in the College of Medicine division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition in the department of medicine. “The center’s primary goal is to foster research collaborations among these multidisciplinary scientists, leading to new discoveries that alleviate human sickness and death caused by immune-mediated auto-inflammatory diseases.”

Inflammation has been found to influence many medical maladies. These include colon and other cancers, irritable bowel syndrome, eosinophilic esophagitis, chronic infectious diseases, systemic pulmonary fibrosis, type 1 diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s. Facilitating interdisciplinary research of the inflammatory processes behind these conditions should accelerate scientific discoveries leading to improved prevention and treatment.