(this seminar will be followed by a lunch from 13.00 to 14.00) 

"Role of monocytic cell activation in liver inflammation : African trypanosome infection as a model"
 
Although liver injury has many etiologies including viral and parasite infection, alcohol abuse, metabolic syndrome and autoimmune disorders, the cellular and pathogenic mechanisms resulting in organ inflammation seem relatively common and uniform. Recent studies demonstrate that this inflammation largely depends on recruitment of monocytes to the liver. Therefore, identifying the cellular pathways for monocyte subset recruitment, differentiation and maturation into tissue macrophages or DCs represent interesting novel targets for therapeutic intervention. In the recent years, we have used experimental infections with extracellular blood-borne African trypanosomes, which cause sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana disease in cattle in sub-Saharan Africa, as model systems to study infection-associated liver pathogenicity. The potential pathways governing the recruitment of inflammatory CD11b⁺Ly6C⁺ monocytic cells to the liver as well as their subsequent differentiation to functional pathogenic TNF and iNOS producing DCs during infection will be detailed the present talk.