Cand.med. Espen Waage Skjeflo disputerer for ph.d.-graden i helsevitenskap og vil offentlig forsvare avhandlingen:
”Harnessing Innate Immunity - Complement and TLR Inhibition in Experimental Models of Gram Positive and Polymicrobial Bacteremia and Sepsis”
Kort sammendrag av avhandlingen:
Sepsis (blood poisoning) is caused by a dysregulated bodily response to infection. Overactivation of the innate immune system is in this regard an important initiating process in the development of sepsis. Bacteria are recognized by cells and proteins in the blood, such as the complement system and white blood cells. Their subsequent activation results in contradictory signals both triggering inflammation and reducing it. Septic patients are therefore in risk of both developing life-threatening multi-organ failure from too much inflammation and of not being able to fight the underlying infection because of too little inflammation. The aim of this thesis was to explore the possibility of reducing the initial reaction to the bacteria by modulating how complement and immune cells recognize the bacteria. We first added reagents that interfered with two key activation pathways of complement and immune cells, before we tested this treatment in a clinically relevant animal model of sepsis. It turned out that both the immune reaction in human whole blood was attenuated and that the treated animals had a greater rate of survival than untreated animals. We therefore concluded that this way of modulating the immune response could be an interesting approach to treat selected cases of bacteremia (bacteria in the blood) and sepsis. (Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig for utlån hos Seksjon for utdanningstjenester frem til disputasdato)
Veiledere
Hovedveileder professor Tom Eirik Mollnes, Institutt for klinisk medisin, UiT Norges arktiske universitet og Nordlandssykehuset
Biveileder professor Terje Espevik, Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research, and Department of Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, NTNU
Bedømmelseskomiteen
Professor Seppo Meri, Universitetet i Helsinki, Finland – 1. opponent
Professor Suzan Rooijakkers, University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, Nederland – 2. opponent
Førsteamanuensis Magnhild Gangsøy Kristiansen, Institutt for klinisk medisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT – Norges arktiske universitet – leder av komiteen
Disputasleder
Professor Rolf Salvesen, Nordlandssykehuset og Institutt for klinisk medisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT – Norges arktiske universitet
Prøveforelesning over oppgitt emne holdes kl. 10.15, samme sted: “Sensing danger – how do complement and the coagulation system work together?»