Miguel Pineda

Biography

Miguel Pineda is currently working as a ARUK Research Fellow in the Department of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation

Research Interest

In health, synovial fibroblasts provide structural and nutritional support within the joint, but increasingly are recognized to serve as critical regulators of the inflammatory microenvironment in disease. Thus, despite fibroblasts are non-immune cells of stromal origin, they play a critical role in the perpetuation of inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Why do synovial fibroblasts adopt an inflammatory phenotype in RA? Functional glycomics, an exciting, emerging discipline focused on defining the structures and functional roles of glycans in biological systems, can offer new answers to this old question because glycans and complementary glycan-binding proteins are essential components in the language of cell-cell interactions in immunity. My aim is to understand how the biological information contained in surface glycans controls the inflammatory response of synovial fibroblasts in RA. Ultimately, understanding changes in cell glycosylation in disease should provide further insight into the mechanisms underlying fibroblast-dependent inflammation and may confer novel stratified therapeutic approaches by virtue of discrete glycomic signatures.