Milka Sarris
- Principal Investigator
- MRC Fellow
- Associate Professor
- Trinity College Fellow
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About
We are interested in how cells navigate in complex tissue environments. We focus on immune cells and ask how they search tissues and find their way to sites of infection or tissue damage. We approach this through state of the art live imaging of immune cells in zebrafish combined with quantitative, genetic and optogenetic approaches.
The Sarris Lab website can be found at https://sarrislab.comLab News:
Dr Milka Sarris, Assistant Professor of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, was one of eight University of Cambridge researchers to win a 2023 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant.
The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. This year it has awarded €657m in grants to 321 researchers across Europe. Consolidator grants are given to excellent scientists, who have 7 to 12 years’ experience after their PhDs, to pursue their most promising ideas.
Dr Sarris was awarded a grant for LongWayFromFlam: The uncharted journeys of inflammatory cells and their functional implications. Dr Sarris said: “My group studies how cells of the immune system move in the body to generate and resolve inflammatory responses. To study these processes, we use state of the art microscopy techniques and genetic approaches in zebrafish, a small vertebrate model organism.
“I am absolutely thrilled to have won this award at a key stage of my career and to be able to pursue an ambitious new line of fundamental research. It was a long process and I remain very grateful to my university colleagues, the peer reviewers and the evaluation committee for their feedback.”
Research
Cell movement is essential for animal development, wound healing and defence from infection. We are interested in how cell movement is guided to functional destinations. We focus on cells of the immune system (leukocytes), which are remarkably capable of traversing different tissue environments and migrating on demand to sites where their antimicrobial function is needed.
Our aim is to understand how leukocyte motion is organised at sites of tissue damage to generate inflammatory responses. Neutrophils are the first cells to be recruited to damaged loci where they execute important antimicrobial functions, such as phagocytosis or secretion of microbicidal compounds. However, excess neutrophil accumulation and inflammation can cause collateral tissue damage and be detrimental for tissue integrity. How do these cells organise their recruitment to achieve the right magnitude of an inflammatory response? What are the chemical and physical cues that allow them to distinguish damaged from healthy tissue? How do they interpret and integrate these signals? How do they make key decisions such as which way to go, how long to stop and whether to call for reinforcements? If we can understand the logic of neutrophil migratory decisions in their complex native environments, we would be better placed to predict and manipulate the behaviour of these cells in therapeutic settings.
To address these questions in mechanistic detail in vivo, we exploit the zebrafish larva, whose small size and transparency make it ideal for high-resolution in vivo imaging. We record leukocyte dynamics using advanced microscopy techniques and use quantitative and statistical methods to determine how these are modulated by chemical and physical signals. We combine this with a variety of genetic, optogenetic or chemical manipulations, to functionally link molecular, cellular and tissue parameters of leukocyte guidance. Through this integrated approach, our goal is to obtain a better understanding of how leukocytes interpret complex environmental cues to generate effective immune responses.
CollaboratorsKristian Franze (PDN, Max Planck Nuremberg)
Ewa Paluch (PDN, University of Cambridge)
Daniel Irimia (Harvard University)
Martin Welch (Biochemistry, University of Cambridge)
Hazel Walker
Hugo Poplimont (PhD student)
Antonios Georgantzoglou (post-doc)
Kim Westerich
Caroline Coombs (PhD student)
Alexis Crockett
Morgane Boulch
Teaching and supervision
Part IB NST Physiology
Part IA MVST Homeostasis