Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases

Prof. Ronit Sagi-Eisenberg

Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg, PhD, holds the Herczeg Memorial Chair of Argentine Friends on Allergy and Related Diseases and is head of the Graduate School for Advanced Degrees. She is a member of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. She completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University and trained at the Weizmann Institute of Science and at the National Institutes of Health in the US.

https://rselab.wixsite.com/mysite

Allergic diseases

Allergic diseases have reached epidemic proportions affecting more than 30% of the world population. Yet, allergy treatment is still by largely symptomatic, the reason being the multiple and diverse stimuli that trigger mast cells, the central players in allergic diseases, and the wide spectrum of inflammatory mediators that are released by triggered mast cells. The latter might cause allergic symptoms when mast cells are triggered by an allergen, but might also cause neurogenic or chronic inflammation, when mast cells are activated by neurotransmitters or neighbouring cells, as is the case of neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancer. Therefore, the best treatment for mast cell dependent disorders would be blocking mediator release from triggered mast cells. To this goal, the SagiEisenberg lab combines functional genomics analyses with high resolution microscopy to delineate the secretory response and identify the protein networks that control this process.

Central proteins are marked as targets for the development of novel therapeutic means aimed at targeting the pathological activity of mast cells during disease.