Interdisciplinary Disease Research
by Hanna Boshnag
Andrew Monteith brings a new scope of research to the Department of Microbiology, as one of its newest faculty members. The research in his lab encompasses the immune and metabolic changes caused by Staphylococcus aureus infection, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and blood cancers.
While these are very different diseases, Monteith explains, there is an overlap in their impact on immunometabolism, their translation to clinical medicine, and in the big question marks that still exist surrounding them.
Once S. aureus, which is usually an asymptomatic colonizer, breaches our defenses, its various strategies of disrupting and evading the immune response become overwhelming, and it can spread to all tissue types in the body. The Monteith Lab examines how neutrophils detect these pathogens and modify their inflammatory response to combat their spread.
The lab also examines disruptions to mitochondrial homeostasis in immune cells related to SLE-mediated tissue damage. Understanding the molecular changes associated with disease could inform novel treatments for SLE, an autoimmune disease of which the cause is unknown.
The third realm of research in the lab involves attempting to characterize how changes in the metabolic controls of hematopoiesis are associated with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). MDS is associated with cytopenia, bone marrow failure, and even acute myeloid leukemia.
“There’s this very complex system of cells that evolve to work together, that are there to cause inflammation as well as resolve it,” Monteith said. “So, you’ve got this balance that occurs, but if things get out of balance, that’s when disease happens. Figuring out the factors driving imbalance is what drives me as a scientist.”
This interdisciplinary approach to studying disease at the microscopic level came as a result of Monteith’s path through research. His interest in both biophysics and immunology started in his undergraduate studies at Bradley University. During his PhD and post-doctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked on studying autoimmune disease, which informs his current work on SLE. His further post-doctoral study of S. aureus at Vanderbilt University also contributed to the questions his lab seeks to answer now.
“My favorite part as a scientist through the years, as a trainee from grad school to post-doc, is making that discovery that someone else hasn’t seen before. Being the first person to see that is what drove me, but that’s changed a little bit since being a faculty,” he said. Now a big part of what drives him is when members of his lab show him the new phenotypes and data they’ve found, being a part of their joy and helping them strategize their next direction.
Monteith’s broad interest across various aspects of immunology is making microbiology research more exciting than ever.